Except, the past few days, when I manage to access not the Full but the Mobile version of the JBF, then I do get in — except I cannot post. When I’m in Mobile and try to switch back to Full, I hit that “John Byrne Forum is closed” message again. 

By the way, I’m writing that as it appears — the message doesn’t say “The John Byrne Forum is closed.” It lack the article “the,” reading almost like it’s not a native English speaker. 

Why in the world has this happened? Weird enough to begin being blocked out by “GO AWAY!”  How does that come up? Doesn’t somebody have to actually create a “GO AWAY!” page and then have it torpedo access to the JBF? Even more the other message that explicitly says the forum is closed and will be back in a few hours and apologizes for the inconvenience. I mean, isn’t this explicit hacking of the JBF? 

GAH!

You could also take your computer to a different wifi point (like Starbucks) and see if that allows you access in an attempt to narrow down whether its your computer or network. If none of that works, it sounds more like your computer may have malware than the site being hacked.

For a while I could access the JBF on my phone but not post. But recently I have been able to. That’s purely through data. My computer doesn’t have any malware blocking the JBF because when I use my mobile hotspot I can connect and access the full site without a problem. 

What’s stopping me is my home internet connection. As with a few others, I found that a few weeks ago I sometimes could not load the JBF. But then later I would try again and it would work. But then two weeks ago I got the “GO AWAY!” page and then after that and up to now I have this “John Byrne Forum is closed” page. This happens on any device I use. My desktop or laptop or phone or iPad. So the problem is related to my home internet. But I reset the router to factory settings and still nothing has changed. 

I really don’t know much about tech. What I can’t figure out is that if this was my own personal problem with my router or something else on my end, how in the world would a page so explicit come up? “John Byrne Forum is closed. We’ll be open again in a few hours. Sorry for the inconvenience.” I mean, isn’t it obvious that somebody created that page with direct reference to the JBF and for some specific usage? Is it a hack? Is it a page that some JBF tech legitimately created at some point when the forum was down, but now for some crazy reason I am stuck slamming into instead of accessing the site? Why would my home internet be susceptible to this kind of error, calling up instead of the site this message?

I’m stumped!

Looking up this 403 message, it seems to be a problem with the way the JBF webserver have set up permissions and I’m getting denied when I should not be. 

Have you gone into your router settings on your computer to check and see if the URL has been blocked there? It sounds like you've narrowed down what the problem is - your network/router - so I would think it would have to be something in your settings causing it to reject the JBF.

But the pages coming up for you just seem to be the expected pages for a 403 error. They don't seem to be the problem, your router or ISP are at fault. Good luck!