No 404 on existing folders

thanks for you answer, I reset everything and came to conclusion it was this line what is causing the issue:

Code:

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|assets|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

Any idea how I can still remove index.php for the url but yet receive a forbidden access when browsing to /application for example ?

EDIT: I found out this has something to do with it being a subdomain rather than a subfolder. When I change the config file the way it works it being a subfolder, everything is working perfectly. No weird symbols when visiting an existing folder like application. But when I change it to a subdomain eg test.example.com it seems to throw in weird symbols when visiting test.example.com/application instead of showing a 403 forbidden or anything similar.

I noticed that a trailing slash is being removed when its a subdomain, and not when it is a subfolder.