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The file restore question I have is to restore a newly developed site to replace an existing site (Joomla!). The developed site is in a subdomain folder. The site to be replaced is at the root level and is the main site. There are approximately 185 other subdomain sites that are NOT to be replaced. Will the Akeeba restore process work for this project?

I just downloaded kickstart 7.0.0 to use in this project.

The restore process does not delete files. Files that are present in the backup archive are extracted and overwrite existing files on the target site. What this means is that if the files for the other 185 sites are not present in the backup archive, those sites will not be affected.

Now, let's talk about something you didn't ask. What version of Joomla! is the existing (root) site and what version is the new site? You should not restore one version of Joomla! over an older version of Joomla! (or newer versions either really). This is because the Joomla! project sometimes moves files from one folder to another between major versions. So the older version is not overwritten and still exists. Two versions of the same file on the same site is a very bad thing.

You may want to consider deleting the files for the existing site before you do your restore to prevent "orphaned" files.

Thank you for the quick response. FYI, both sites are at the same Joomla! version 3.9.18, most current. To clarify, I upload kickstart.php and the backup file and then execute the kickstart file. Correct?

Since both are the same version, you don't need to delete the existing site files.

Yes, your steps for restore are correct. If you have trouble getting kickstart.php to run, rename your .htaccess file. I don't think that will be a problem.

What would cause a 500 internal server error when executing kickstart.php?

Where are you getting the 500 error? Is it still extracting the archive or has the restore started (technically the restore is done by ANGIE, not Kickstart)?

I do not get the flash list of warnings. Get the 500 error right away.

I can think of two things:

1. There is an .htaccess file on the site that is preventing Kickstart from running. I would expect a different error, but it could be. Look at the site with FTP or your file manager for an .htaccess file in the root of the site. Note that .htaccess is a hidden file and you need to set up your FTP client or file manager to see hidden files.
2. We need an .htaccess file and there isn't one. In many cases when you select a version of PHP from your host's control panel it puts a special command in the .htaccess file in the root of the site to use that version. If the extraction overwrote the .htaccess file, the special command would be lost and the PHP version would drop back to the host's default version, usually very old. Try selecting your PHP version for the site again and see if that creates an .htaccess file in the root of the site. Note that this could affect all your sites. But if it does, you may already have issues with the other sites and don't know it yet.

There is a .htaccess file with the right PHP version indicated just updated today because I updated the PHP version to 7.1

OK, so we do need an .htaccess file to make this work, bit if it's still there, then it's not the problem.

Let's see if we can get it to give us a little bit more information. Edit kickstart.php and about line 21 you'll see:

//define('KSDEBUG', 1);

Delete the two leading // so the line starts with "define". Then start Kickstart again. This time you'll get a log file of the steps it completed and where it was when it stopped. Please zip and post the log file here.

Where will I find the kickstart_error_log?

I made the change and started it, but cannot find the log. Which would mean not kickstart problem but host problem-right?

The log file should be in the root folder, the same folder as kickstart.php.

If there is no log with debug turned on, that means that Kickstart is dying almost instantly. The information about the 500 error in the server error log would really help at this point. If you can't access the error log (not all that unusual) your host certainly can.

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