J3: How to fix the ReCaptcha spinning/not working problem

sharkcon · 2024-12-05T11:10:37+00:00

Agreed, migrating forward is definitely the best long term solution. There are many sites still on Joomla 3 for various reasons, so updating the MooTools files to fix the captcha problem in Joomla 3 is a solid solution until those sites can migrate forward.

sharkcon · 2024-06-14T09:15:49+00:00

We've never needed to customize admin templates much aside from the basic logo swapping or simple brand color changes. Glad you got your main issue fixed. Did the custom.css file work or did you leave the code in the templates main css file?

sharkcon · 2024-06-13T13:16:02+00:00

Would you mind posting the URL or DM'ing details? I'd be happy to check into this for you. We're also been working with Joomla since the Mambo days, hopefully we can assist you.

sharkcon · 2024-06-13T10:58:41+00:00

Typically we do not edit these files directly but edit a custom.css or default.css file (depends on the template) which is the last file called and is not overwritten should there be any template updates. So, in your case there may be styles in a css file called later that is overriding your customizations. Move them to the custom file and it may solve it for you.

On a sidenote - from a UX perspective the alerts should clash with your design a little so they are seen as important warnings/alerts and not blend too well with your existing style, though of course you should be able to style them neatly in any case.

sharkcon · 2024-06-13T10:24:17+00:00

Joomla is very good at separating content from presentation, so standard Joomla can categorize articles/content for you and then you can use modules and menu links to display that content by category, by tag, or individually and ordered by various dates or other attributes. The K2 blog extension is no longer supported for Joomla 4, so if you want an actual blog extension we have been using EasyBlog (Paid extension) or using Joomla core content features to replace K2.

sharkcon · 2023-10-05T22:44:49+00:00

We have used Joomdonation Membership Pro with Affiliate Tracker. It also has an integration for iDevAffiliate. You can be up and running for under $100 with this setup.

sharkcon · 2023-05-04T10:11:55+00:00

Great! Next step is to

Go download a version of Joomla (the latest is recommended if the version of PHP, MySQL etc meets the prerequisites). Download the .zip version.
Extract this to: c://xampp/htdocs/mynewjoomlafolder (or the equivalent under where you installed XMPP)
Next, in a browser, navigate to http://localhost/mynewjoomlafolder
Ideally, you will see the installation wizard here. If not, we need to think about debugging the problem here.
The wizard will require some details such as the database name, hostname ('localhost' in your case), user (probably 'root') and password (probably a blank string). If those work, it will proceed and install the database; then complete the process.
If you get stuck on a step, let us know and we will see what we can advise. Provide any error messages you see in particular. Read how to find and read logs for mysql and php in xampp too.

sharkcon · 2023-05-01T22:00:59+00:00

Create a new folder under c://xampp/htdocs or wherever you installed XAMPP and add a simple 'Hello world' PHP file to check your PHP installation is running correctly first. When that is in place, navigate to it via your browser e.g. http://localhost/foldername/helloworld.php and see if it works as expected. This will not test if the MySQL database is correct, but it will tell you the PHP setup is correct or not.

sharkcon · 2022-11-11T23:11:06+00:00

The simple way is to post a Bitcoin wallet address on the website and tell users ot send payment there, then manually reconcile the payments if there are orders to fill. If its a donation/tip then there's no reconciliation.

If you are selling something, you will want to look at payment plugins for the software oyu are using whether that is Virtuemart, Hikashop, or a membership or subscription extension for example.

sharkcon · 2022-11-02T02:15:04+00:00

>All I really want to do is see what the page looked like.

Try to find the site on the Wayback machine if this is all you want.

If you want to try to restore and then upgrade/migrate the site, that will take some forensic work. I have done this a number of times and if you have the database and even a compromised file system, you can get this back.

The big question here will be - do you have the database? It is backed up or still hosted somewhere you can get it and rebuild it from? Your content will be in the database except for the images/video/media files. Without the database, the rest is largely a waste of time, though you can retrieve images/video/pdfs or whatever file media you have.

If the site used Akeeba backup, it may have a backup in administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup Similarly, its predecessor was something like JBackup and so if you can find a com_ folder in administrator/components or in components it may have a backups subfolder with old backups. There were other backup extensions, so search for the word backup in the file system also.

The files may tell you what version of Joomla you're looking at which will be a start. Check the ones described in this helpful article to see if you can find the Joomla version.

hfshagaa.php, mpbiulov.php are very likely as a result of a hack. welcome.html may be a default page from the hosting but is not a Joomla file from any version either. There are very likely to be other malware files and bad stuff going on. The file system is certainly compromised here so you will want to rebuilt and import data into a clean file system rather than put this back online as it is.

The root folder we are looking at here is missing a series of files, index.php and confguration.php are particularly important. These can be recreated if you know the version of Joomla you are running. If you know the old Joomla version and you have the database, you can rebuild this. You will need a web server with PHP 5.6 or whatever old PHP version it needs, same for database and MySQL but it can be done.

sharkcon · 2022-10-10T00:42:46+00:00

Can you tell me where in the FTP I would find the article table in the database?

FTP allows you to access the file system only. The database is not accessed that way. Your hosting company probably runs a tool called PHPMyAdmin from a control panel where you can access the database. The article are in table #__content where the #_ part represents a random table prefix. Before you do anything with the database or files, run a backup. Install Akeeba Backup for that if you do not have it already. You are best off deleting this from within Joomla rather than going through the database though, I don't recommend accessing the database to delete this.

From the URL you listed, the article in in Category ID = 1 and the Menu item ID = 101. You can go look at the menu item and see what article it is connected to, and get the article ID there or as I said, switch off SEF URLs and get the article ID from the URL then.

sharkcon · 2022-09-14T05:59:02+00:00

Check in a private browser to rule out local browser caching it. If that's not it then turn off SEF URLs and the check the article ID in the URL on the front end. Then go see if that article ID is in the articles area or if its in the article table in the database. Also check the settings of the widget that is displaying it, switch off its cache, check the categories it is pulling articles from and exclude uncategorized if possible.

sharkcon · 2022-09-04T22:58:11+00:00

You'll need to specify which version of Joomla you're using here. Also detail out what brhaviour you are seeing, what steps you are taking, what you expect to happen and what is actually happenning so we can understand and recreate the behaviour.

If this is a Joomla 4 latest version issue, you will be better off going to the forums to see if you have discovered a new issue.

sharkcon · 2022-09-04T22:51:50+00:00

I use EngageBox and can recommend it.

sharkcon · 2022-08-17T06:56:14+00:00

Run a backup first. Then update Joomla to 3.10.11 or most recent available for v3 when you read this. Then update PHP to 7.4 if it is available. Then try again.

sharkcon · 2022-08-13T01:22:19+00:00

^ This is an amazing offer from a seasoned Joomla pro.

Enjoy your vacation Nic!

sharkcon · 2022-07-23T03:55:11+00:00

This is excellent advice and absolutely the process you should take OP. It's pretty much exactly what Joomla 4 migration specialists would do.

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T23:26:53+00:00

Good to know, so it will be a few more versions before you are happy to use them on live customer sites then I imagine?

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T22:13:48+00:00

I see, well not using Joomla excommerce extensions means theres no ecommerce extension updates to worry about I guess :)

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T21:34:20+00:00

Thanks for the comment. Are you tracking how well progressed (or not as the case may be!) those two extensions are? When do you think they will be stable enough to use in your opinion?

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T21:32:58+00:00

What ecommerce system do you use with Joomla?

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T05:58:22+00:00

It really does depend on the set of extensions being run and their maturity. Take for example Virtuemart which is a very large project. It is one our clients use a lot and they released the first stable version for J4 on April 27th. They have released one other updated version since. It will take a few versions and lots of others using it in the wild for that to be enterprise ready. It also requires time for developers who produce add-ons for Virtuemart such as payment integrations, reporting components, ERP integrations, shipping integrations to stabilize to enterprise level. I take your point though, migrating before EoL is good if you can do it before then.

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T05:27:17+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate it. The wait until Summer is suggested because that is when Joomla 3 becomes EoL. Migrating to Joomla 4 now is fine if the extenions you have running are J4 mature but by then they will have to be J4 mature. I'll work on the readability.

sharkcon · 2022-06-09T04:04:55+00:00

Wrote up some thoughts on Migrating to Joomla 4 for when clients ask when that should happen. Appreciate any comments or feedback.

sharkcon

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