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Admin Tools

#43185 Error 403 Forbidden after update to Joomla 5

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla!’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
5.4.7
PHP version
8.3.32
Admin Tools version
7.8.9

Latest post by moira on Wednesday, 22 July 2026 01:34 CDT

tcgass
Hi
After updating the site to Joomla 5.4.7 I noticed, that any changes I make to Akeeba Tool settings give me a 403 error. The site is as well not connected to mysites.guru anymore, mentioning as well an error code 403.
What could this be caused from?
Thanks for your help and support

moira

For the mySites.guru connection error, this is a known issue: the connector plugin needs direct web access to a .php file that Admin Tools' Frontend Protection blocks by default. To fix it:

  • Go to Components → Admin Tools → Server Config. File Maker
  • Scroll to "Allow direct access, including .php files, to these directories"
  • Add a new line: plugins/system/bfnetwork
  • Scroll to the top and click Save and Create .htaccess

For the 403 error when saving Admin Tools settings, since this affects saving configuration generally (not one specific feature) and started right after a Joomla update, we suspect your host's own web server protection — most commonly a mod_security2 ruleset on Apache. Because Admin Tools' settings are security-related, some of the values you save (e.g. certain WAF options) can accidentally match a pattern in the host's ruleset and get blocked before the request even reaches your site.

Could you please contact your host and ask them to check their mod_security (or equivalent) logs for a blocked request around the time you tried to save, and mention which page/URL you were on in the Admin Tools backend? They'll be able to identify the specific rule and add an exception for it.

Moira Fari

Support Specialist

🇬🇧English: native 🕐 My time zone is Asia / Nicosia
Kindly note that my replies are fully vetted by our developers.

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