Timthumb 403 Forbidden Error Page

Comment on SEO Recent Posts WordPress Widget by SEO Dave.

Looks like you have all your Stallion thumbnail options set correctly, which means it’s a Timthumb issue.

The small thumbnail images that aren’t loading (aren’t created if you see nothing in the /cache/ folder) are created by a script called Timthumb.php which is built into Stallion.

If you load the Timthumb images you’ll get a

ERROR 403 – FORBIDDEN page

In FireFox “Right Click” on one of the images that aren’t loading and click “View Image”, you’ll load the image thumbnail, but it won’t work, you’ll get the 403 error page.

You should see a small image with URL like this one when everything is working correctly:

https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/timthumb.php?src=https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-custom-header-options.jpg&w=75&h=75&q=85

If you search Google for

Timthumb 403 Forbidden Error Page

You’ll find a few possible causes, for example are you using a security plugin like BulletProof Security? Looks like about half of the first ten results for the above Google search are related to BulletProof Security blocking timthumb.php.

I don’t use BulletProof Security, so if that’s the problem (or another security plugin) you’ll need to track down the problem. I didn’t develop timthumb.php, just use it with Stallion for creating thumbnails on the fly.

BTW the Stallion regenerate thumbnails feature isn’t the cause or part of the problem. That’s a separate feature, it doesn’t create these thumbnails, that feature recreates all your WordPress images in the media library so you can make new sizes: Stallion includes multiple new custom image sizes like a 500px wide image, but on an old site you have to regenerate all the images in your library to have access to the Stallion custom sizes.

David