TOPIC: No Captcha image - have checked other posts...

Hi all,

I have just installed !joomlacomment on two sites and it works fine on one, but not on the other and I have tried a couple of solutions suggested in the forum like changing permissions via Filezilla, but to no avail. The Captcha image just doesn't display.

The site is www.plasma-quest.com and an example page is http://www.plasma-quest.com/hitus-technology-pql-welcome/partnership-viability.html .

Could anyone offer any help please?

Thank you in advance,
Antony

www.plasma-quest.com//components/com_com...dd9c76907d7a9c3387b4

You don't have, perhaps the gd or freetype library on that server. Or something from the suggestion about .htaccess.

Hmm, this might be a tricky one....

I noticed a few bugs in your Joomla template, not sure if they are related but it helps.

Indeed, the image is just missing. It is probably as Daniel said, a missing gd or freetype library on the server - or an older incompatible version or something.Check your error_log under the public_html (or www) folder on your server. You might need to turn on PHP error reporting first. If the error_log file is huge (several megabytes), delete it via FTP first (its safe) then refresh the page with broken Captcha, and a new error_log should generate with only the recent errors from that refresh.

Let us know what the results are, you can just paste the error_log in a CODE box here or upload/attach it.

Hi Jonas,

I resolved the issue with my hosting company. Comments as follows...

We have investigate the issue in details and we noticed the following error message :

[2009-06-30 08:28:33]: error: file is writable by others: (/home/plasmaq1/public_html/components/com_comment/joscomment/captcha.php)

Since the php script was set with incorrect file permissions it could not be executed. That is why it was not working. We applied the correct permissions ( 755 ) for the file and as far as we can see the issue was resolved.

Please check it on your end.

Thanks for your assistance,
Antony

Ah, glad you got it sorted! I saw you edited your post, but i'll reply to that anyway just for some info...

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean regarding turning on PHP error reporting. How do I do that please?

Your hosting company did it for you The PHP permission error they repaired can be found in the error_log file I mentioned. Some webhosts don't allow access to such technical data, I suppose this was the case here.

Just out of curiosity, when you first installed Joomla! do you remember setting up an FTP account for it through the Install Wizard? Reason I ask is because this sort of thing might happen again (incorrect permissions when installing Joomla extensions) and having a system FTP account for Joomla to use internally usually prevents these things from occuring.

I highly recommend you check this, it may save you from headaches down the road. Log in to your Joomla administrator panel, and go to 'Global Configuration' > 'Server' tab > Check the FTP Settings section on the bottom-left and see if they are filled out.

If they are not, I can help out with setting that up if you need it. If they are there and it is enabled, I guess your web server just made a random mistake somewhere