Site is returning a 403 error in some instances and other issues

[CeruleanSnake]

Hello all! I guess this is my first official post!

Anyway, so I'm very new to site making having only been a webmaster for about maybe a month lol. I have learnt an incredible lot in that short time and really feel like my site is going great (though I'm never satisfied lol).

My only issue is in some cases, I seem to get 403 errors when accessing the site through certain means. One such case is when I try to use the W3C validator. I'm able to access my site here https://theceruleansnake.com/ just fine on multiple devices.

I should mention I am using hotlink protection and set CORS to allow on some sites as I hot link to my webcomics mirror on another site too. Removing these settings in my htaccess though doesn't change anything. I also have it set up where I can use links with no .html at the end because I like the clean links.

I should also mention that my site doesn't display on the melonland ring and just returns ??? Here https://melonland.net/surf-navigator?site=2872 not sure if it's because of the issues above or I just need to post more lol. I've added melon land to my approved domains as per above but that didn't fix the issue.

Any help would be super appreciated! 


***Edit***
So I found the problem, I use cloudflare to block bots (particually AI bots) and that was interfering with the validator services above, so I turned off Bot Fight and now it works again! Though I'm not sure why I still display ??? in the surf club ring, probably need to post more lol.