TOPIC: Blank page Joomla backend

Hi!

Today I wanted to try out the Joomlacomment component.
It worked just great offline, but when I installed it on a webserver I could not access the Joomlacomment area in the Joomla backend.
When I try to access the Joomlacomment admin area I get a white page.
What am I doing wrong?

Greetings,

Dr.Monkeylover

ARe you using php4 on the live server?

Thanks for your quick replay!
PHP 5 is supported on the server, but they are running PHP/4.4.7


HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:18:08 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.53 (Fedora)
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7
P3P: CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM"
Expires: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Set-Cookie: ja_purity_tpl=ja_purity; expires=Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:18:08 GMT; path=/
Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:18:09 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

тurn to php5, perhaps this will be the solution. And using php5 should be easy enough I guess you should add something to the .htaccess file.

Thanks for your reply.
What can I do to use PHP 5? What something should I add in the .htaccess?

I renamed htaccess.txt to .htaccess
Then i added this line to the .htaccess;
AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
Now everything is working just fine, great component, thanks!

@edit; Crap, now the website doesn't work anymore.
When i remove "AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php" everything works again, except for the Joomlacomment component.
What am I doing wrong?

Can Joomla hotswap between PHP4 and 5 easily like that?

It could be anything that's not updated to work with PHP5, wow that'd be crazy.

Is the page completely blank when PHP5 is enabled? And there isn't even any source to look at? If so, your Template is probably the cause. Try testing PHP5 under a different template, like ja_purity.

Thanks for you reply, JonusC!
I just did a fresh install of Joomla to see if that would help, I documented every step.

1.I installed Joomla 1.5.14
Everything worked, PHP 4 was active.

2.I installed joomlacomment4.0.0beta1.zip
I tried accessing the joomlacomment by going to compontents > joomlacomment
Every page in the joomlacomment admin backend is white, I tried it with several browsers to see if I would get an error message, not.
The comment function has been successfully added to the frontend.

3.I opened the htaccess.txt
I added the line AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
Nothing happend, I dont know if PHP 5 was active, I removed AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php.

4.I renamed the htaccess.txt to .htaccess
Nothing happened.

5.I added the line AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php to the .htaccess again.
I could access the joomlacomment backend, so that means that PHP 5 is working.
But the comment function no longer works on the frontend...
And I can't access articles, modules and plugins in the Joomla backend, if i press one nothing happens...


I have spended over more then 30 hours on this problem, could someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?
Any form of help is welcome!


Greetings,

Dr.Monkeylover

If it's not a permissions issue then it must be a server problem. Please enable Maximum Logging in the Joomla Global Configuration and check the error_log file, or on-screen error messages depending on php.ini configuration.

There may be something else your .htaccess/server configuration requires for this special "PHP5 extensions" thing to work 100%, although I've never dealt with it before.

EDIT
1) Verify which command your server host lists as the correct method - it will be one of these three lines:2) Make sure the correct command is at the end of .htaccess
3) I assume you are on a test/localhost site. Try erasing the webhost and starting again, this time setting the PHP5 handler command before installing Joomla and keep it enabled while installing and testing JoomlaComment. Swapping from PHP4 to PHP5 in the middle of an existing Joomla install.

EDIT2
Further investigation lead me to discover that this .htaccess command doesn't actually enable PHP5 at all, it's pretty much still being executed by PHP4 but with a PHP5 "addon extension" for the PHP software on the server. As such, I really don't know if this is good enough for JoomlaComments' PHP5 requirement - only Daniel might know this.

Oh also, do you have the $livesite variable set? And is the .htaccess in the root of your webhost (i.e. public_html/)? And is this .htaccess based on the Joomla default or did you create a brand new, empty .htaccess file?

It might have to do with a permissions issue, I get a lot of errors when i run GuardXT.

I tried:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler cgi-php5 .php
Somehow none of them work.

What do you mean by $livesite variable set?
( i'm, kind of a n00bser)
The .htaccess I am using is the Joomla htaccess, I am not using an empty one.
The .htaccess is in my root, in httpdocs/.htaccess
The website is online, I am not testing offline.


@edit; I just installed an older version, joomlacomment3.26, I turned on legacy mode.
Everything seems to be working fine.

Search for $live_site in configuration.php - having it as a non-empty string is known to cause problems with JoomlaComment4 when Joomla is not installed to a subfolder. If Joomla is installed to a subfolder under htdocs/public_html/whatever, trailing slashes and multiple vars can also cause problems.

Well I suppose if it's not practical for you to try reinstalling Joomla with PHP5 enabled permanently, then JoComment 3.x is the only choice for old PHP4 servers. When you one day feel the need to switch to a new webhost, be sure you verify they use a modern PHP5 server with SuPHP/PHPSuExec (or a similar server capability of run-PHP-as-rootuser-instead-of-nobody) for the best Joomla compatibility; as outlined in the Newbies' Getting Started with Joomla document

Oh - not having the FTP Layer enabled is known to cause problems too, I can't stress enough how important that is and it is the cause for a lot of permissions and JoomlaComment issues we've had. Most people who are new to Joomla seem to not even know what it does, despite there being a big warning in the documentation about how its recommended for best capability

Thanks again for you advice, I don't have anymore time, I will try it tonight /tommorrow.

Thanks!

Hey not a problem, glad to be of help! Let us know how you go when you get a chance to try it all out. Best of luck