VisualEditor - Error contacting the Parsoid-/RESTBase-Server (HTTP 403)

Question

I just installed a new MediaWiki instance on my Namecheap shared hosting (Stellar plan) and when I try to save changes to a page using the Visual Editor, I get the following error:

Error contacting the Parsoid-/RESTBase-Server (HTTP 403)

I tried updating the $wgServer = "http://wiki.name.domain.com"; to $wgServer = "https://wiki.name.domain.com"; line in LocalSettings.php (using my domain) as suggested on the MediaWiki visualeditor talk page but I'm still running into the same error.

Can anyone suggest how to best troubleshoot this error?

Answer 1

I suggest getting more information about the error using mediawiki's debug methods listed here on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_debug .

HTTP 403 errors mean that the request is forbidden by the server . This means that if there's a specific file that VisualEditor is trying to access, you can potentially use the logs to find out which specific file is being requested, and then try to find out how that file, or its location, is being secured.

In my case, in order to address this error, my webhost namecheap needed to whitelist the following ModSecurity rules:

• [id "212960"], [id "212970"], [id "212980"], [id "212990"]

Unfortunately for security reasons, they could not provide the ModSecurity whitelisting rules logs.