Forbidden access minified CSS & JS – W3TC

Yesterday, I migrated my WordPress site to a new Ubuntu installation. After the migration was successful, I enabled W3TC and it messed up the whole css. First I thought it was just CSS but then when I explored found that it is not just with css but js too.

It has something to do with the minify folder.

For instance, when I viewed the generated source code and tried to view the following link: http://website.com/assets/cache/minify/000000/ZYxbCoUwDEQ3VG8UrguKaX2gTUoSUXev-CGIfzNnONNCRBsnErZfnjj8wa82d7I_ITQQZeNFMFYZGYekQGbQq7CHGkhXprFoKjfuRNxcsdx_r9n8WNLXoNVc8gk.css

I get this error:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /assets/cache/minify/000000/ZYxbCoUwDEQ3VG8UrguKaX2gTUoSUXev-CGIfzNnONNCRBsnErZfnjj8wa82d7I_ITQQZeNFMFYZGYekQGbQq7CHGkhXprFoKjfuRNxcsdx_r9n8WNLXoNVc8gk.css on this server.

I knew the issue must be with .htaccess and found the problem to with the code W3TC injects into the file.

# BEGIN W3TC Page Cache core
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} =on
    RewriteRule .* - [E=W3TC_SSL:_ssl]
    RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =443
    RewriteRule .* - [E=W3TC_SSL:_ssl]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
    RewriteRule .* - [E=W3TC_ENC:_gzip]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} w3tc_preview [NC]
    RewriteRule .* - [E=W3TC_PREVIEW:_preview]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !=POST
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} =""
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(comment_author|wp\-postpass|w3tc_logged_out|wordpress_logged_in|wptouch_switch_toggle) [NC]
    RewriteCond "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/assets/cache/page_enhanced/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/_index%{ENV:W3TC_SSL}%{ENV:W3TC_PREVIEW}.html%{ENV:W3TC_ENC}" -f
    RewriteRule .* "/assets/cache/page_enhanced/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/_index%{ENV:W3TC_SSL}%{ENV:W3TC_PREVIEW}.html%{ENV:W3TC_ENC}" [L]
</IfModule>
# END W3TC Page Cache core

Any help to resolve the issue is much appreciated 🙂

https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/