Fix 403 Forbidden Error for an MVC Website in Plesk

When your ASP.NET MVC website shows a 403 Forbidden error in Plesk. This article explains how to resolve this issue.

MVC websites do not require an index page to function properly. It has a file called Global.asax with required configuration settings defined to function properly without an index file. 

Sometimes we face issues with MVC websites showing up "403 Forbidden Error". This is mainly due to migrating the MVC website from the development environment (Local Machine) to Production environment (Web hosting server). During this migration, the MVC website settings may go out of sync and our IIS web server will treat it like any other normal website by looking for the index page. in the document root. 

How to resolve this issue the below mentioned requirements needs to be fulfilled: 

1) You need to make sure that the below mentioned code line exists in the web.config file: 

<system.webServer>
  <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>
</system.webServer>

2) Make sure that ASP .Net version is greater than 4.0. 

3) Make sure that the website is provided with full trust

4) At Plesk >> Domains >> Hosting Settings, Enable "Additional write/modify permissions"

5) At Plesk >> Domains >> Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Website, Enable "Enable 32-bit applications"