XAMPP (Mac) Virtual host showing 403

Question

I keep getting Access Forbidden Error 403 when I try running my installation of XAMPP on my MAC

I am running the project outside of /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs<

Answer 1

I kept having this 403 issue and could not find an answer UNTIL...

Curly (right and left) quotes where in my vhosts file.

If you see something like "xe2\x80\x9c" in your error log then this is your problem.

I opened the httpd-vhosts.conf file in a reliable editor (I used Dreamweaver) and noticed that the quotations are curly ones (left and right quotes). They need to be straight quotes. The regular text editor on my Mac would auto change any quotes I make to these curly ones and I wasn't noticing it.

Hopefully this answer will help someone.