Title: wp-cron.php and error 403
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# wp-cron.php and error 403

 *  [Vincent Mimoun-Prat](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vprat/)
 * (@vprat)
 * [18 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/)
 * Hi,
 * I am working (unsuccessfully) on the problem of my future posts not being published.
 * I have checked the following:
    - My logs on the host tell me that there is an error 403 with wp-cron.php.
    - When I call manually wp-cron.php from my browser, the future posts get published.
      That means this is not a problem of file permissions.
    - The `echo $errno . " " . $errstr;` gives me a 0, which means that the fsockopen
      call in cron.php actually succeeds
 * I have read the ticket [http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3742](http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3742)
   but now I am running out of ideas. What could be the problem?
 * Thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  Thread Starter [Vincent Mimoun-Prat](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vprat/)
 * (@vprat)
 * [18 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/#post-602591)
 * Solved the problem. It was a .htaccess rule that was blocking the request:
 *     ```
       SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent ^$ bad_bot
       <Limit GET POST HEAD>
       Order Allow,Deny
       Allow from all
       Deny from env=bad_bot
       </Limit>
       ```
   
 * Could a user agent be specified in WordPress’ internal requests?
 * The requests just need to be added the following:
    HTTP/1.0\r\nUser-agent: WordPress\
   r\n
 * In any case, how to modify my .htaccess file so that it accepts the internal 
   requests from WordPress even if no User-Agent is specified (but keeping that 
   rule of denying access if no User-Agent is specified)?
 *  Thread Starter [Vincent Mimoun-Prat](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vprat/)
 * (@vprat)
 * [18 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/#post-602592)
 * Additional question: which are all WordPress internal requests?
 * Potential GET requests in:
    \wordpress\wp-admin\import\blogger.php \wordpress\
   wp-includes\class-snoopy.php \wordpress\wp-includes\comment.php (in this one 
   a user agent with value ‘WordPress’ is supplied, see line 535)
 *  [Michael Clark](https://wordpress.org/support/users/planetmike/)
 * (@planetmike)
 * [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/#post-602620)
 * I just discovered the exact same problem on one of my blogs, I was blocking idiot
   spiders that don’t give a user-agent. Please add one to the next version of WP.
   I’m running WP 2.3.2.
 *  [geofones](https://wordpress.org/support/users/geofones/)
 * (@geofones)
 * [18 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/#post-602631)
 * I’m getting lots of 404 errors in WP2.5 like this:-
    /wp-cron.php?check=9big 
   hex number any help appreciated all from my blogs IP address

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘wp-cron.php and error 403’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [geofones](https://wordpress.org/support/users/geofones/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-cronphp-and-error-403/#post-602631)
 * Status: not resolved

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