# Discourse domain showing error 403 - forbidden
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [January 30, 2018, 9:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391 "2018-01-30T21:11:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sfzeller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sfzeller)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2018, 9:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391/1 "2018-01-30T21:11:48Z")
Decided to go with Discourse as our forum of choice, and opened an account with Digital Ocean. I have successfully installed Docker and Discourse on our server there, however the domain “[discourse.dynomotion.com](http://discourse.dynomotion.com)” shows up as an error 403-forbidden up in my browser, so I can’t register and finish my setup. Any idea why that is?
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391/2 "2018-01-30T21:16:56Z")
That looks like an NGINX or Apache error page - are you running something else intentionally on the server?
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### Author:  [@sfzeller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sfzeller)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2018, 9:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391/3 "2018-01-30T21:22:53Z")
Well, I set up the subdomain “discourse” on my existing host (A2 hosting). I was planning on leaving my existing site there, and use Digital Ocean just as a host for my forum.
Now when I type the IP address of my Digital Ocean server (that runs Discourse), I do see “Installation successful. Register…” - after registering, I was waiting for an email that never arrived, even though I am pretty sure I have entered all the correct SMTP information.
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2018, 9:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391/4 "2018-01-30T21:29:44Z")
So the subdomain is an A record pointing to the IP address of your DO server, correct?
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### Author:  [@sfzeller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sfzeller)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-domain-showing-error-403-forbidden/79391/5 "2018-01-30T21:34:08Z")
Having read your reply I realized I had forgotten that - not very unimportant - step 😉 It is pointing to the DO server now and working. So at least I am only left with the issue of the missing email… I specified the correct server name and port of my hosting company