Error 403 Access Forbidden You don't have permission

[falconator]

Using Xampp 1.7.7 and Ubuntu 11.10

I have tried searching google and searching this forum. None of the fixes I have tried have worked. I have installed xampp and verified that it works. I edited the httpd.conf file to include the alias I wanted and everytime I try to access the directory in google chrome I get: "Error 403 Access Forbidden You don't have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server."

I tried chmod and chown the directory for the alias and the /opt/lampp directory. I can't figure out what to do next. I was sure to stop and start the xampp server each time I made changes as well.

I can provide more details if that is helpful. Thanks in advance for the help.

[JonB]

I edited the httpd.conf file to include the alias I wanted

what do you mean by that? - details would be very useful

And - what changes did you make to ownership and permissions