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Admin Tools

#42705 Problems due to the message “Your server configuration file may need to be rebuilt”

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
6.0.2
PHP version
8.3.29
Admin Tools version
7.8.6

Latest post by nicholas on Tuesday, 10 February 2026 05:39 CST

Tuesday, 10 February 2026 04:02 CST

paracelsus

In Akeeba Tools/Control Panel, I see the following message: “Your server configuration file may need to be recreated.”
When I activate this option, my panel disappears immediately and I receive error message 403 with the following note: “You do not have permission to access this resource.”
This means that all access to my home dashboard is blocked.
I then replace the current .htaccess file with one from a few days ago.
And I can access the dashboard again.
But the message “Your server configuration file may need to be rebuilt” is still displayed, as you can see in the attached screenshot.
What should I do?

 

Tuesday, 10 February 2026 05:39 CST

nicholas

The message you get means that if you were to generate a .htaccess file with the current .htaccess Maker settings its contents would be different than your current contents.

As to what happened, I can only guess. Here's what usually happens in these cases.

Most likely you selected a different PHP version in your hosting control panel. This does modify your .htaccess file and, as documented, you need to transcribe these changes into the "Custom .htaccess rules at the bottom of the file" area.

Since you have not done that, regenerating the .htaccess file overwrites the current one. However, since the block of code to enable the new PHP version is not applied (since it wasn't transcribed, and Admin Tools does not know about it) you end up with a broken site due to an incompatible PHP version.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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