Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden

If you have directory indexing off, and is having this problem, it's probably because the try_files you are using has a directory option:

location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;
}                 ^ that is the issue

Remove it and it should work:

location / {
  try_files $uri /index.html index.php;
} 

Why this happens

TL;DR: This is caused because nginx will try to index the directory, and be blocked by itself. Throwing the error mentioned by OP.

try_files $uri $uri/ means, from the root directory, try the file pointed by the uri, if that does not exists, try a directory instead (hence the /). When nginx access a directory, it tries to index it and return the list of files inside it to the browser/client, however by default directory indexing is disabled, and so it returns the error "Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden".

Directory indexing is controlled by the autoindex option: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html

If you're simply trying to list directory contents use autoindex on; like:

location /somedir {
       autoindex on;
}

---

server {
        listen   80;
        server_name  example.com www.example.com;
        access_log  /var/...........................;
        root   /path/to/root;
        location / {
                index  index.php index.html index.htm;
        }
        location /somedir {
               autoindex on;
        }
}

Here is the config that works:

server {
    server_name www.mysite2.name;
    return 301 $scheme://mysite2.name$request_uri;
}
server {
    #This config is based on https://github.com/daylerees/laravel-website-configs/blob/6db24701073dbe34d2d58fea3a3c6b3c0cd5685b/nginx.conf
    server_name mysite2.name;

     # The location of our project's public directory.
    root /usr/share/nginx/mysite2/live/public/;

     # Point index to the Laravel front controller.
    index           index.php;

    location / {
        # URLs to attempt, including pretty ones.
        try_files   $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # Remove trailing slash to please routing system.
    if (!-d $request_filename) {
            rewrite     ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    #   # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
    #   # With php5-fpm:
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param                   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

}

Then the only output in the browser was a Laravel error: “Whoops, looks like something went wrong.”

Do NOT run chmod -R 777 app/storage (note). Making something world-writable is bad security.

chmod -R 755 app/storage works and is more secure.