error 403 forbidden - can't get virtual host to work

Question

I have looked into every solution possible but I can't get the virtual host to work. I just can't get rid of the "403 Error - Forbidden Forbidden.". My virtual host file is:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerName jcontact.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/jcontact.com

<Directory /var/www/html/jcontact.com>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    Require all granted
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

I have enabled using a2ensite and apache2ctl -t shows syntax is OK

My directory structure is: /var/www/html/jcontact.com/index.php

chmod is 755 from html all the way down. except for jcontact.com which is 777 out of frustration

chown is associate:www-data recursively from html down.

navigation to jcontact.com gives the "403 Error - Forbidden Forbidden."

navigating to localhost is perfectly fine, but navigating to localhost/anything gives a 404

I'm ready to throw in the towel. It should not be this hard.

Answer 1

So the problem I was having involved my /etc/hosts. I did not have the right ip/name combination for the site listed in my conf file. This explains why upon searching my error.log file, I was not seeing any errors relating to the 403.