I don't know whether this is related to the recent 403 errors in the dB, but a user reported to me that he couldn't start a topic in the Beginners' Tech forum, without the follow error:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forums/index.php on this server.
Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk Port 80
Might be likely, there seems to be going on some odd errors around lately.
Hope AGA can find some time to see if he can figure out what is going on.
I had the same problem a few days ago. I wrote about it here (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56099.0). It seems to be working fine for me now, however.