[or Check Your WordPress.com Privacy Settings]

Yesterday I was being an eedgit. For the life of me couldn’t figure out why I was getting a 403 error “Remote file returned error response 403 Forbidden”. I was trying, and failing, to get image attachments to import from a WordPress.com XML export file into a self hosted WordPress installation.

I wracked my brains and Google but I couldn’t figure it out. Helpfully the blog I was working on [it’s revamp of my friend Stewart Andersen’s Homes and Travel site – now live ] is based on the excellent Carrington Framework by Crowd Favorite. Whilst researching it I’d noticed a link to their WordPress Help Center on their forums. I thought I’d have a shot at it and hoped it could be sorted within the three minutes of free help they offer…

Talking it through with them I realised what I’d done. To avoid duplicate content issues I’d set the WordPress.com blog to private before I finished the import. That simple. WordPress.com was deying access to the new blog based on the instructions I’d given. I was logged in so everything looked fie but the new site.

The answer: Make sure your WordPress.com privacy settings are not set to private!

I guess it’s the sort of stupid thing people don’t admit to – so until now no Google results to find.

Anyway many thanks to Matt Walters and the WordPress Help Center…

When you’re stuck, talk to the bear or give the WordPress Help Center a shout… [thanks guys!]

Last updated on 5th September 2018