Accessing via a proxy is a complete pain in the arse. Any attempt to access this site directly gives me a DNS style “forbidden” which carries over to the other PCs in my house as well. I’m thinking I don’t have something wrong with my software, since it affects every pootah on my home network, hence my suggestion that my IP is being blocked?
Wot did I do wrong? 
Did you comment on the deleted Appleby thread ? 
My guess is that your using virgin media… well known for this problem, its not blocked our end its your ISP that’s the issue, Will give them another call but I would guess like all other times they will choose not to do anything about it
after yet another waste of time on the phone with Virgin Media- it appears the only way you can resolve this is by phoning up them yourself and complaining a lot- unless we open a business account with them and host on their servers they will not talk to us at all.
Rest assured I am not leaving it there - but you guys have to ensure you tell Virgin that you have the problem not just us, they will listen to paying customers
Had it happen 3 times with Virgin. It fixes itself after a while.
clear your inter history cache and unplug your modem/router for at least an hour, should reset your ip and allow access, dunno why but it works, had it happen to me on a few forums a while back
harry:
Had it happen 3 times with Virgin. It fixes itself after a while.
+1 I always said virgin is female
flush your dns might help.
Winseer:
Wot did I do wrong?
Winseer,
You’ve done nothing wrong mate, it’s quite a common problem with Virgin I’m afraid.
You’re not alone, because exactly the same thing has happened to me with poxy proxies and all. 
There’s also this fairly recent post too…
The shortcut version to solving this is for you to speak to Virgin and ask to be put through to a person who can help you to cancel your account. The problem that they deny seems to get fixed quite quickly after that.
I had this quite a lot when on sky they always denied it was there fault when it was I even told them the prob ( something to do with the “godaddy” server they used ) but no until asked to be put through to someone who can help cancel when through to them told them the prob sorted within min
Thanks for the replies all.
I am still using a proxy to get on here alas.
You have correctly deduced that I am indeed on Virgin media, which I was not away was conducting a policy of “block all sites not paying money directly to us” kind of thing.
Usually at this time of the year, I phone up, hit the “if you’re thinking of leaving us” option, and get a £60 discount to keep me hanging on another year.
The emoticons don’t work. Bugger it.
Winseer:
Thanks for the replies all.I am still using a proxy to get on here alas.
You have correctly deduced that I am indeed on Virgin media, which I was not away was conducting a policy of “block all sites not paying money directly to us” kind of thing.
Usually at this time of the year, I phone up, hit the “if you’re thinking of leaving us” option, and get a £60 discount to keep me hanging on another year.
The emoticons don’t work. Bugger it.
Strange as I’m on V and never had a prob …
Happened to me too, and I don’t go any where near Virgin(s) - though I do wholeheartedly agree they are an utterly pish ISP.
As an ex IT guy though, I can tell you that it’s very unlikely a 403 Forbidden error has anything to do with your ISP, it’s an error code served by the (probably Apache) webserver hosting the website, it’s generally served when access is denied to a particular resource.
It means “The request was a valid request, but the server is refusing to respond to it.”
The time it happened to me, I had made a tongue in cheek comment on a thread which contained a word that begins with V, which describes a small blue object often used for males that need to… ahem, enhance, themselves I was immediately ‘Forbidden’, yet I could happily access via my phone or when tethered to my phone.
At the time I suspected it was a spam-blocking feature that auto-blocks the offending users IP address, but when i emailed about it… was told i wasn’t banned. Plugged in a different router, got a new IP address, and all working again, so just kinda brushed it off.
This post just reminded me I’d also seen it before. I still suspect it’s an anti-spam measure which is just a little too aggressive, it’s probably adding an IP ban directly into the .htaccess file in either the server / forums root folder.
HTH, but i suspect it won’t 
Winseer:
Thanks for the replies all.I am still using a proxy to get on here alas.
You have correctly deduced that I am indeed on Virgin media, which I was not away was conducting a policy of “block all sites not paying money directly to us” kind of thing.
Usually at this time of the year, I phone up, hit the “if you’re thinking of leaving us” option, and get a £60 discount to keep me hanging on another year.
The emoticons don’t work. Bugger it.
I’m sorry to hear that you’re still experiencing difficulties.
I believe the emoticons are fixed now though. 
My tip for dealing with Virgin (from my own experience) is that you need to contact their “I’m thinking of leaving you dept” and make the point that you can’t access TN via their service. I found that I had to ask to speak to a supervisor/manager, but I got there in the end.
They’ll probably tell you that they will check for you… they’ll then tell you that they’ve checked and can view TN at their end, which is true BUT when you ask whether they’re using the same route as you, they’ll have difficulty maintaining their position that all is well.
In that situation, my next move was to say that I didn’t disbelieve what they’d said, but to keep to my insistence that their service is of no use to me if I can’t use it to access TN.
It might have been coincidental, but my normal service was resumed pretty quickly after that conversation and I can add that it hasn’t faltered since.