Installed a wordpress website on IIS with Windows Server 2012 I had to migrate the site from a working site which happened to be on Server 2008 across to a virtual server running 2012. Migrated the database, copied the files and the site was working! Thought it was done.
But went to modify a theme builder to the newest version? Error the uploaded file could not be moved to wp-content/uploads/2017/03 well ok, but let me upload media? same error. Cannot write the file. Then I look this up and find websites saying Permissions must be set for the wwwroot folder so wordpress users can access and write to the folders.
Once that was changed and I put the IIS users and application to FULL control? went to upload the file and now it says: HTTP error. nothing else. I put files in the wwwroot upper level folder even, still get the HTTP error.
by chance I went to go back in the website and its blocked now, says HTTP Error 401.3 - Unauthorized You do not have permission to view this directory or page because of the access control list (ACL) configuration or encryption settings for this resource on the Web server.
Most likely causes:
The user authenticated by the Web server does not have permission to open the file on the file system.
If the resource is located on a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) share, the authenticated user may not have sufficient share and NTFS permissions, or the permissions on the share may not match the permissions on the physical path.
The file is encrypted.
Things you can try:
Open File Explorer and check the ACLs for the file that is being requested. Make sure that the user accessing the Web site is not being explicitly denied access, and that they do have permission to open the file.
Open File Explorer and check the ACLs for the share and the physical path. Ensure that both ACLs allow the user to access the resource.
Open File Explorer and check the encryption properties for the file that is being requested. (This setting is located in the Advanced attribute properties dialog.)
Create a tracing rule to track failed requests for this HTTP status code. For more information about creating a tracing rule for failed requests, click here.
In the IIS server Manager, I go into the Authentication, the setting for Anonymous user identity: was set to Specific User with IIS_IUSR ?? and many posts on the IIS forum said change that to Application Pool Identity, so I did that. didnt help. Go back and there are no credentials available to apply. If I apply that user name and my own password or make one up? it says invalid password