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Site Restoration

#10882 Restored subdirectory redirects to original site

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Monday, 30 January 2012 08:52 CST

Monday, 30 January 2012 08:43 CST

user56619
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)?

Yes, mainly "Clicking on a link on the restored site takes me to the original site (link migration issues)", but also "Common issues on restored sites and how to solve them"

Have I searched the tickets before posting? Yes, but I was unable to find any that relate.

Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Isn't this the same as the troubleshooter documentation? I believe so.

Joomla! version: 1.5.25
PHP version: 5.2.13
MySQL version: 4.1.22
Host: SiteGround
Akeeba Backup version which took the backup: 3.3.4
Kickstart version used to extract the backup: 3.3.2

Description of my issue:

My restored site redirects immediately to my original site.

I restored an Akeeba .jpa backup file of my site (www.zionadventures.com) in a subdirectory of my site (www.dev.zionadventures.com). I made sure to create a new MySQL database for the restored site, so it could operate independently of the original.

When I try to access the restored site at www.dev.zionadventures.com, it redirects immediately to the original site. When I access the backend (www.dev.zionadventures.com/administrator), however, this works normally. Can you help me figure out the problem?

I have examined my configuration.php file, as suggested in your documentation. I configured the "live site" correctly during the backup process. This is what configuration.php shows:

var $live_site = 'http://www.zionadventures.com/dev';

I have examined my .htaccess file and tried everything you suggest, including:

• Uncommenting "Rewrite Base" to apply RewriteBase /dev
• Removing all redirections in .htaccess
• Removing the entire .htaccess file

None of these changes allowed me to access the restored subdirectory site. I also tried disabling my redirect tool, ReDJ, in both the original and subdirectory sites, but this also had no effect.

Do you have any suggestions for the next step in troubleshooting? I will appreciate any advice you can offer.

Thanks!
Nick

Monday, 30 January 2012 08:52 CST

nicholas
Hi Nick,

The next thing I would check is the existence of a SEF component. Some SEF components store the absolute site URL.

From that point, I'd try creating a subdomain instead of a subdirectory, with its web root OUTSIDE of the main site's directory. The reason is that .htaccess settings are inherited by subdirectories and Apache does that based on the filesystem hierarchy, not the logical (subdomain/subdirectory) organisation. If the subdomain solution works, it was a conflict with the main site's .htaccess.

If that's not an option, I'd try temporarily renaming both the main and dev site's .htaccess files to htaccess.bak and retry visiting the dev site. Again, if that works, you have a .htaccess conflict.

The next thing to check is trying to log in to the backend. If that works, check your menus for URL items having a hardcoded full URL pointing back to the old site, especially the default menu item. Moreover, check your content for such links as well.

If none of these work, you most definitely have a third party plugin kicking in and doing the redirection. You can go inside the plugins subdirectories and start renaming the PHP files to .php.bak to temporarily disable the plugins (even though Joomla! reports them as enabled, it won't find the .php files it expects and load them; a Joomla! hidden secret)

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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