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Site Restoration

#21376 Kickstart completes but then frontend has no template and backend is blank

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

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 tampe125 on Tuesday, 04 November 2014 05:43 CST

Gilan
Back-up works perfectly.
Kickstarts seems to work perfectly.
After kickstart indicates succesful restoration, front-end of the website has no template or any formatting, and backend shows a blank page (i.e. no login box).

I am also running Admintools, and thought it could have something to do with the htaccess file - however after deleting htaccess it still didn't work (I also tried using default Joomal htaccess).

I also checked configuration.php to make sure the live_site variable was correct and it is correct.

It's also not a hosting issue as I'm simply trying to move a new site from a subfolder to place it in the root.

Please advise soonest?

Thanks and warm regards

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
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, let's see if it is a .htaccess issue. Try renaming the .htaccess file in your site's root to htaccess.bak If there is a .htaccess file in the site's administrator directory, try renaming it as well. If that solves the problem, the issue was with a directive in your .htaccess file. We'd like to recommend you to try removing directives from your .htaccess until you find the one which causes the problem.

If that doesn't help, the error you are receiving is in fact a PHP 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.

IMPORTANT: Sometimes the error won't show. Edit your configuration.php and find the line starting with public $error_reporting and set it to:
public $error_reporting = 'development';

This instructs Joomla! to enable maximum error, warnings and notices verbosity. In 99.9% of cases it will result in the error messages being shown on the browser.

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.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡นItalian: native ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งEnglish: good โ€ข ๐Ÿ• My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Gilan
Thank you Davide

I have removed .htaccess files in both the root folder and the administrator folder and still blank screen.

I got the error from the log, as your requested. I get this error when trying to access my administrator backend while using the URL query "password" from Admintools.

(Note that sine this is a public ticket I have replaced certain information with 'x' because I'm not sure whether revealing certain info would would a security risk.

[Tue Nov 04 13:13:33 2014] [error] [client 105.237.73.168] File does not exist: /xxx/xxx/xxx/xxxxx/2015ibo2/administrator/www.gilangork.com, referer: http://www.gilangork.com/2015ibo2/administrator/index.php?mypassword

I have also found that if I just go to /administrator OR /administrator/index.php it redirects me to the front-end (which still has no template or formatting to it).

Hoping the error gives you some insights...

Gilan
Davide, in my playing around, I found that if I leave the 'live_site' variable in configuration.php BLANK, the site then suddenyl works! But if I enter the [correct] live_site URL then it gives all these errors!
Not sure if you have the answer to that or if it's even an Akeeba issue...

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
That's an issue with Joomla that can't detect the correct path.
Usually you have to leave the live_site variable empty, you have to fill it only if you're experiencing issues.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡นItalian: native ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งEnglish: good โ€ข ๐Ÿ• My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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