Common Joomla! 3.2 upgrade/installation problems

GavickPro Team

11 years ago

When you have decided to update your previous Joomla! Installation to the latest 3.2 release or just started with Joomla! 3.2, you may notice several more or less serious problems connected with this version.

reCaptcha is not working

This problem exists not only in Joomla! 3.2 but in previous versions as well. The issue is caused by the old reCaptcha URL in Joomla! core files. Since Google has changed address to reCaptcha script, all captcha’s in Joomla! stop working. Bug is affirmed here : The reCaptcha function has been temporarily disabled for Joomla 3.2 and solution should be included in the next release. But don’t worry, right now you can fix captcha problem by yourself. There are several descriptions of the same solution:

Joomla! 3.2 registration and login problem (workaround)

Another important problem is associated with new Joomla! passwords. Joomla! 3.2 supports 128-bit passwords (you can enable Strong Passwords in User – Joomla! plugin configuration) and when the old ones are shorter and less secure you may notice the problem with login after user registration. When you upgrade your older Joomla! version and keep this option disable, then everything should be working fine – all passwords will be saved in the database in an old format. In other case, you will get mix of old and new passwords which means that new registered users can’t login (password reset is broken also). To fix this issue you need to modify several Joomla! core files but just particular lines. Solution for this problem is provided by Alterbrains and may be found here Joomla 3.2 passwords issue (solution)

Blank screen after Joomla! 3.2 upgrade

Last but not least is the problem with blank screen after upgrading. This problem may be related with other things. First of all, you should compare Joomla! requirements with your server settings and make sure that all your extensions are compatible with Joomla! 3.2. While Joomla! 3.2 recommends to do set displaying errors option in PHP to off the blank screen, it tells you absolutely nothing. The important part is to see the error description. Solution for that is in this article and it describes how to enable showing errors on frontpage. Please remember to disable this function when you resolve your problem!

Quickstart Installation Database Import Problem

If you want to start running Joomla! 3.2 with our quickstart package you should firstly check your server configuration. Quickstart packages are tested on server which is 100% compatible with Joomla! and if your configuration is different , you may notice some problems. The most common obstacle during Joomla! installation is never-ending database installation. The Joomla! installer is hanging during the database import or go back to the previous installation step. The problem is caused by PHP errors output in installer code. Solution for this issue is very simple and you will find it on our official documentation (gavick.com/documentation).

PHP Warning (Strict) messages on the frontpage

Exactly like in the previous case, the problem is related to the server configuration. While Joomla! recommends to display_errors to OFF, many hosting companies enable this option by default. Solution for this problem may be found here: Quickstart Installation Problems – How to fix them? When disabling this option via ini_set() rule is not working, it means that global server configuration should be changed. In this case, the only way to solve this problem is to contact with your hosting company.

More detailed information about our templates and extensions for Joomla! and WordPress may be found on our official wiki – GavickPro Documentation. We have prepared there a collection of articles describing our products, however, if you feel that something is missing, you may leave a comment below this article!