TOPIC: Captcha problem.

I have a joomla 1.5.7 installation with joomlacomment 3.26. I cannot see the captcha image. I have the legacy plugin activated because of joomlacomment and was wondering whether I should install joomlacomment 4.0 instead or try to fix this problem in 3.26 while waiting for 4.0 native.

The problem is not coming from the legacy mode. Did you searched the forum for more help?

Normally I do quite thoroughly but this time I didn't because my main problem is deciding whether to make this work in legacy or wait for your 4.0 which should work in native. If you say stick with the legacy version for now i will search the forum before reposting any problem. I have never not had problems with captcha for any extension. Thank you for your quick reply.

Larry from Montreal

Stick with the legacy and search the forum.
Probably it is again some kind of file permission problem. The legacy is not a bad thing you know?!

I've been trying to learn a few things by reading the forum. I noticed that besides my captcha image not showing I don't see emoticon images either. I see that I have gd ver 2.034 bundled enabled and freetype ver 2.19. My image files for captcha and emoticon images are chmoded to 644. http://vegetarian.pl/dzainamafia/index.php is the site I'm building. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

For some reason you have a wrong path to the image:
http://localhost/vivic_joomla/components/com_comment/joscomment/captcha.php?refid=163a84fd007c7c9ec87635e97279b948

I changed it to vegetarian.pl/dzainamafia//components/co...7c9ec87635e97279b948
(see image attached) and the captcha immediately was there.

SO I believe look at the configuration file of joomla and search for that wrong path. Greetings!
Daniel

compojoom.com/images/stories/wrong_url.png

Thank you Daniel for your prompt reply. This does tell me something. I have a xampp installation on my computer and it is pointing to another joomla site I had there. I'm not sure how that happened. I just checked my joomla configuration.php and I could see no path to http://localhost/vivic_joomla/..... Everything is vegetarian.pl/dzainamafia/ as it should be but.... So then I checked the /components configuration.php and guess what? For some reason that completely escapes me it is configured for an old xampp installation I had there. It would seem to me that all my components on my siteground dzainamafia are configured to my old local xampp installation called joomla_vivic.

I have a myriad of extensions installed on this joomla 1.5 site that I have been installing and trouble shooting and tweaking so this floors me. It would seem the obvious solution is to put the right data into this configuration file but..... I am worried about doing this and wondering how this happened, and whether doing this will solve all my problems or just leave me a mare's nest that will require a whole new installation of my joomla site with all the extensions that I have installed. I think I feel a heart attack coming on.

I realize that this is not a joomla comment problem but I wonder if you could be extremely helpful and suggest how I can most easily correct this situation without doing all this work again or point me in the right direction for finding an answer to this bizarre problem.

My alzheimers is letting up a bit and I now remember that I did start building this site on my local xampp before uploading it to siteground where I installed many more extensions so that I could show my partner in Poland what I was doing with our site.

Any advice you could give me Daniel would be greatly appreciated. You are obviously much more adept at joomla and php than I am.

Hey there Larry!
What do you mean with the /components configuration.php ???
I know only one file that is called configuration.php and it is in the root folder of joomla.

The captcha.php file is making require_once(...configuration.php) and so we bind the file to the captcha. So if in this configuration.php you have localhost, then it will take localhost.

You can try to define all the values from the configuration file in captcha.php - so you don't have to make any changes to the configuration file, but that is stupid. Best solution - change the values to one you need for the web site.
Greetings!
Daniel

What are you saying?

sorry some friends came over and distracted me. I was just going to show you this screen shot of my explorer for joomla. I think I have some files in the wrong place for some reason or other.

When I make the screen shot small enough to upload it gets impossible to read. I just wanted to show you the mysterious configuration file. I just checked the joomla instalation files and there should only be an index.html file here along with the component folders. Looks like I went a little wild with my ftp upload. This is not a nice way to wake up in the morning. I'm glad I finally got my joomlapack working. It seems the only safe way to be sure that I don't have my files all screwed up is to start over again. Thanks for your help Daniel.

Glad you found a solution
Come back and give us a link to your web site when you are ready!
Greetings!

Thanks again for your patience and assistance, Daniel. I will do that.

I'm sorry to bug you again with my quandary, Daniel but I saw how much work I would have to do to reinstall my site from zero and decided to try to find the source of my comment captcha problem.

I've been mulling over my problem for a couple of days and playing around. I decided to go in and clean up the files on dzianamafia and I deleted an old joomla data base that had the same prefix. Perhaps that didn't help my problem.

But that still didn't help. My /configuration.php file looks good. You tell me that comment calls a require_once for the configuration file so why is it still trying to point at a xampp installation on my local computer that doesn't even exist any more?

I'm going to ask you what I hope isn't a stupid question. What happens if I replace the installation file and go through the installation procedure on my dzianamafia site? Would that make a mess and cause me to lose the configuration I have done and content? Could it solve the problem? I know I must be testing your patience. But I am really interested in learning more just how joomla works so I can learn to solve my own problems. Cheers.

Larry from Montreal

I just can't figure out where joomla comment is picking up the wrong file name for where to look for the image files. My configuration.php looks okay. Even uninstalling it and re-installing it does not solve the problem.

Don't try the thing with the installation file.
Why don't you search all files for the string "your localhost" and look where it is written.

I have been looking. My big problem is that I don't really understand how joomla works. I just can't figure out where that localhost pointer could be.

Honestly I have no Idea where it is, but it is somewhere there. DOwnload all the files and then search them with a tool for the text. and you will find where this bastard is.

I have a copy of my site on xampp so I will try your suggestions. I was looking around and getting a little confused by Ajax. I think I will check w3schools.com and see how that works too.