Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden

If you have directory indexing off, and is having this problem, it's probably because the try_files you are using has a directory option:

location / {  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;}                 ^ that is the issue

Remove it and it should work:

location / {  try_files $uri /index.html index.php;} 

Why this happens

TL;DR: This is caused because nginx will try to index the directory, and be blocked by itself. Throwing the error mentioned by OP.

try_files $uri $uri/ means, from the root directory, try the file pointed by the uri, if that does not exists, try a directory instead (hence the /). When nginx access a directory, it tries to index it and return the list of files inside it to the browser/client, however by default directory indexing is disabled, and so it returns the error "Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden".

Directory indexing is controlled by the autoindex option: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html

Here is the config that works:

server {    server_name www.mysite2.name;    return 301 $scheme://mysite2.name$request_uri;}server {    #This config is based on https://github.com/daylerees/laravel-website-configs/blob/6db24701073dbe34d2d58fea3a3c6b3c0cd5685b/nginx.conf    server_name mysite2.name;     # The location of our project's public directory.    root /usr/share/nginx/mysite2/live/public/;     # Point index to the Laravel front controller.    index           index.php;    location / {        # URLs to attempt, including pretty ones.        try_files   $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;    }    # Remove trailing slash to please routing system.    if (!-d $request_filename) {            rewrite     ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent;    }    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000    location ~ \.php$ {        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;    #   # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini    #   # With php5-fpm:        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;        fastcgi_index index.php;        include fastcgi_params;        fastcgi_param                   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;    }}

Then the only output in the browser was a Laravel error: “Whoops, looks like something went wrong.”

Do NOT run chmod -R 777 app/storage (note). Making something world-writable is bad security.

chmod -R 755 app/storage works and is more secure.

If you're simply trying to list directory contents use autoindex on; like:

location /somedir {       autoindex on;}

server {        listen   80;        server_name  domain.com www.domain.com;        access_log  /var/...........................;        root   /path/to/root;        location / {                index  index.php index.html index.htm;        }        location /somedir {               autoindex on;        }}