Cannot edit articles or menu entries Topic is solved

[David Anson]

Hi,

I am running a site which has been operational under Joomla 3 for some 5 years. It is now running Joomla 3.9.4 and recently due to the warning messages I updated PHP to 7.2.16

I have just tried to go and edit an article and when I click the link the next page displayed is a complete blank (in Safari). I have also tried it in Chrome and I get a browser error displayed -

This page isn’t working
awarenesscounselling.ie is currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500

The same happens when I try to modify a menu.

Any ideas?

[leolam]

Please clarify more since I can browse any links on your frontpage normal?

Leo

[David Anson]

It is happening in the back end, not the front end.

[David Anson]

Sorted it. The JCE was well out of date. Uploaded latest version and all OK now.

[David Anson]

Ooooops. No I haven't. All was working fine but now tried to log back in and the back end home page is totally blank. Even trying to log in on Chrome just gives a blank page - not even the 500 error I was getting earlier.

[David Anson]

I built a Joomla site for a friend some 5 years ago (https://awarenesscounselling.ie) at 'mates rates' because of the nature of what he does but then I left it to him to keep the site up to date with full back end access. He has made a number of changes/improvements over the years but recently needed to update PHP on his server (for which he is also responsible) at which point I went into the back end and realised that his template had not been updated so I did that before finally updating the PHP version and all seemed OK.

The other day he contacted me as when he tried to edit/create an article or menu the resulting page was blank. I dug into the site a bit more and found the the editor he was using - JCE - was 5 years out of date - I suspect it was installed before JCE used the Joomla Update process. I therefore updated it to the latest version and the problem disappeared - I could create and edit articles and menu items.

However when he logged into the site the back end home page did not appear, all that did appear was a totally blank page and the same thing happened to me when I tried to log in. I have dug into this some more and when I have logged in to the back end, if I manually append the URL with the correct option qualifier I can get to the list of articles and menus and then when I click on a specific article it goes into edit as you would normally expect.

So I have a work-around but I really need to get back to full functionality.

My first question is how can I find out what is causing the error? I have tried error console on Safari but there is virtually nothing been sent through.

My second question is, does anyone have any idea what could be causing the issue? My friend has put a few extensions on the site (not many) over the years but otherwise has not massively messed around with the back end.

TIA

[leolam]

@David, please run and post results from Forum Post Assistant

Leo

[David Anson]

Hi Leo

I have sorted it now, thanks. It was a problem with the JCE editor not having been updated for a long time. Installed the latest version and then had to unpublish the old version's extensions as these had not been overwritten when updating.

David