Nginx - Laravel - LEMP - getting 403 Forbidden error when accessing any page other than /

Question

Just created a Laravel 7 application and transfered it to my new digital ocean droplet. Ive installed LEMP and everything needed for it to work.

However when I go to the server IP and access the home page '/' none of the assets (images,css,javascript) are being loaded. If I go to any other page on the application I get the error 403 Forbidden.

Nginx error.log shows a ton of these:
*47 access forbidden by rule, client: IP_ADDRESS(ive changed this to hide IP), server: IP_ADDRESS(ive changed this hide IP), request: "GET /images/logo.jpg HTTP/1.1", host: "138>2021/03/12 00:03:12 [error] 8059#8059:

My nginx file looks like this:

server { 

    listen 80; 
    server_name IP_ADDRESS; <------Changed this to hide IP 
    root /var/www/challenge/public; 

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN"; 
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"; 
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"; 

    index index.html index.htm index.php; 
    charset utf-8; 

    location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string; } 

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; } 
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; } 

    error_page 404 /index.php; 
    location ~ .php$ { 
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock; 
        fastcgi_index index.php; 
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name; 
        include fastcgi_params; 
    } 

    location ~ /.(?!well-known).* { deny all; } 
}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Remove this line from your config:

location ~ /.(?!well-known).* { deny all; }