How to fix 404 Error on Forgot Password page in phpBB

If you recently update your phpBB forum website into 3.3.3, you probably encounter some errors like when accessing the /user/forgot_password/ page returns 404 error as well as the /help/faq page. The problem starts when the latest version of phpBB starting to invoke the old page ucp?mode=sendpassword page and started to use the .app page to redirect these pages.

Looking for some advices to fix the error on the official phpBB community either they asked to give you information or having no response.

List of affected page that returns 404 error:

• /user/forgot_password/
• /help/faq/
• /reset_password

It takes me hours looking to fix the error and able to fixed the error page. The problem lies on the default configuration file phpBB/docs/nginx.sample.conf from their docs which is erroneous especially when using sub directories as your forum page.

How to fix on Nginx

To fixed this problem on Nginx, simply find the location directive and change the try_files $uri $uri/ @rewriteapp into try_files $uri $uri/ /app.php?a=$uri;

Here’s a fixed for forum located at root (eg: https://yourforum.com)

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /app.php?a=$uri;
}

If you’re using phpBB as a sub-folder like (eg: https://yourwebsite.com/forum). The configuration should look like:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /forum/app.php?a=$uri;
}

Also, don’t forget to remove the @rewriteapp.

    #location @rewriteapp {
    #    rewrite ^(.*)$ /forum/app.php/$1 last;
    #}

Then restart your nginx server and those pages should now be ok.

sudo service nginx restart

Troubleshoot

You also need to check the latest version of your theme styles as there are new function that will look for new template for the forgot_password page. Updating your theme to the latest version that supports phpBB 3.3.3 will fixed the problem.