THANK YOU!!!

found out it was a issue with the server.  they whitelisted for me and now it is corrected

from hosting provider
"It looks like such behavior of the website can be explained by recent triggers of our security module indeed. ModSecurity is an Apache module that works as a web application firewall ( . It blocks known exploits and provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications. However, sometimes, ModSecurity may incorrectly determine that a certain request is malicious, while it is actually legitimate."

The initial template that comes with AbanteCart has images in the main home page  text banner.  But when I try to replace the image or add a new image i receive Page Not Found message and the changes are not saved.

found out it was a issue with the server.  they whitelisted for me and now it is corrected

from hosting provider
"It looks like such behavior of the website can be explained by recent triggers of our security module indeed. ModSecurity is an Apache module that works as a web application firewall ( . It blocks known exploits and provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications. However, sometimes, ModSecurity may incorrectly determine that a certain request is malicious, while it is actually legitimate."

i may have spoken to soon -  i added info in the htaccess.text file and the 403 error stopped but now i just get "page not found message" 

i will try you steps you suggested above

please provide path to that folder.  i am new to AbanteCart and not familiar with it folder names.  i did a search in cpanel and did not find that specific folder