Emulate a 403 error page

Solution 1:

Just echo your content after sending the header.

header('HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden');

echo 'You are forbidden!';

Solution 2:

http_response_code was introduced in PHP 5.4 and made the things a lot easier!

http_response_code(403);
die('Forbidden');

Solution 3:

Include the custom error page after changing the header.

Solution 4:

For this you must first say for the browser that the user receive an error 403. For this you can use this code:

header("HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" );

Then, the script send "error, error, error, error, error.......", so you must stop it. You can use

exit;

With this two lines the server send an error and stop the script.

Don't forget : that emulate the error, but you must set it in a .htaccess file, with

ErrorDocument 403 /error403.php

Solution 5:

Seen a lot of the answers, but the correct one is to provide the full options for the header function call as per the php manual

void header ( string $string [, bool $replace = true [, int $http_response_code ]] )

If you invoke with

header('HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden', true, 403);

the normal behavior of HTTP 403 as configured with Apache or any other server would follow.