Support

Hi Brad,

Since you have removed Admin Tools manually, there is no Admin Tools code running on your site any more. As a result, the issue you are experiencing is not related to Admin Tools' system plugin.

Another thing you should try is renaming any .htaccess files you may have in your site's root directory and the administrator directory. If that works, then one of the directives in the .htaccess file was causing the blank page. If you had used Admin Tools' .htaccess Maker to generate your .htaccess file this is possible (you have to do some try and error to determine which features are compatible with your server) and we do have troubleshooting instructions to guide you through.

If this still doesn't help, remember that a white page or a page with a 500 Internal Server Error is, in fact, either a .htaccess issue to a PHP fatal error in disguise.

First, check your server's error logs (not the access logs) immediately after visiting the page which throws the error. There should be an exact description of the PHP fatal error which occurred. Sometimes you can find the error messages in files called error_log or error.log inside the site's root and/or administrator directories. If unsure about the error log location, please consult your host. Most likely the error logs are available in your site's cPanel, Plesk control panel or similar hosting account management facility.

If your host does not give you access to the error logs and you have access to the Joomla! administrator area, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, click on the Server tab and set the Error Reporting to Maximum (Joomla! 1.5) or Development (Joomla! 2.x and later). Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a blank page, edit your configuration.php file and put the following code right after the final closing curly brace ( this is what a curly brace looks like --> } ) but before the closing PHP tag (it looks like ?> that is a question mark and a greater-than sign):

ini_set( 'display_errors', true );
error_reporting( E_ALL ); 

Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a white page, please remote the two lines from your configuration.php file. Edit the .htaccess file in your site's root. If you don't have a file named .htaccess create a new one. Beware that htaccess.txt is a DIFFERENT FILE and will NOT work! Add the following to the end of the file:

php_flag display_errors On
php_value error_reporting 32767

and retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, remove the two lines from your .htaccess file. Now, create a file called php.ini with the following content:

display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL

and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, delete the php.ini files your created and choose a different host. If your host doesn't allow you to debug any PHP-related issues there is no point paying them.

Please note that if you can not understand what the PHP error message means, just copy and paste it here verbatim so that we can take a look and point you to the right direction.

You're welcome, Brad! I always try to help my users as much as possible – the fine red line being having to debug someone else's code. After all, I have been a new user myself a few years ago. Some other people taught me how to debug sites. It's now my turn to pass on this knowledge. It's actually a win-win situation. You get to know how to debug blank pages / 500 error messages. This will help you get better service in any support forum, including our own. This helps both of us in the long term. And everybody else who stumbles on a similar problem and finds this thread on a search. Awesome!

Have a great day and thank you for your kind words! :)