Problems with Home Page after updating to Joomla 4.4.4 Topic is solved

[megacquire]

I did the update to Joomla 4.4.4 in the Admin. It went fast and completed without errors. When I went to the Home Page, everything was gone except the top menu. The top menu links work (except the Home link). So I went into Admin to check the Home page article. It had the yellow star for Featured. I never featured it. Thinking that could be the problem, I turned the featured off and went back to the website and there was the Home page! BUT, if I refreshed or left the Home page, the problem returned. So then I featured it back, and again, same problem. The Home page appeared, then disappeared. As long as I feature and un-feature, I can get a glimpse of the home page.

Then I noticed something else. The Home page URL had index.php added to it. That was never there before. In researching how to solve this problem, I came across something where I can remove index.php from all the pages, but I don't want to do that. I have too many links both inside and outside of Joomla that would need to be changed. I just want my Home page back. I don't care if it adds index.php to the damn URL.

My home page alias is home, so I decided to change it to index to see if that would work. It didn't, so I put it back to home. The website is https://acquisitiongames.com.

I'm clueless. I have limited knowledge about this type of thing. I'm on a shared hosting plan and I have to fumble through everything to get things to work. The php upgrade was a huge problem for me and I ended up having to just rebuild the entire site on Joomla 4.? because I couldn't get the database to update. Everything was working beautifully until I did the latest upgrade to 4.4.4.

I've thought about reinstalling the Joomla core files, but I have no confidence that is going to help and I worry it will only make things worse. I also rebuilt another Joomla site, but I used 5.0 for that one. I probably should have used 5.0 for this one too, but I was hesitant and used Joomla 4 thinking it would eventually update me to 5. Right now I'm not sure if upgrading to 5 would help, and since there is no way to update to 5 in admin, I would like to avoid that headache.

I need help. I know just enough to wipe out the entire website and rebuild it again. That seems like a ridiculous idea just to fix the home page, so I'm hoping someone can give me an easier fix.

After previewing this post before I submit it, I went back to the website. Apparently it isn't just my home page. There are other pages doing the same thing, such as the Customer Feedback page, which hasn't been "Featured" and it has always included index.php in the URL.

[pe7er]

Welcome to Joomla forum!

When I visit your website I see a sitemap without layout:

Screenshot from 2024-05-27 08-11-03.png

All links go to another website, e.g.

Code: Select all

https://shopacquisitiongames.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=16

Did you install a Zen Cart webshop in the same folder as Joomla?

[megacquire]

No. Zen Cart is a separate website installed separately from Joomla. The link from Joomla is just a URL link that goes to the other website. I also just updated Zen Cart and now that needs some work, but I can't see any reason the Zen Cart update would affect the Joomla update. I've been updating both for probably 15 years now. What is a sitemap without layout?

Edit: To clarify, the only links that go to Zen Cart are the links under Shop Our Store. The rest of the links are the Joomla site.

Edit 2: I also have a mobilejoomla template for acquisitiongames.com. It is up to date and the mobile site is just fine. That's probably because the pages in the mobile site are NOT the same pages in the desktop version. I completely redid each page for the mobile site. So it's only the desktop version that has the problem.

[pe7er]

What is a sitemap without layout?

See the screenshot I attached to my previous message.

I just noticed that there's more text below that "sitemap".

If you have Google Chrome, use its Inspect function.
On the "Console" tab you can see some errors,
and on the "Network" tab you can see that your site tries to load
/media/mj/s/f.php?f48219.css
/media/mj/s/f.php?3b1418.js
/media/mj/s/f.php?98b441.js

It's very uncommon to have PHP files in the media folder that try to load css and js files.

And I cannot find any mention of /templates/ in the HTML source of your website.
It seems that no template is loaded, hence the weird layout.

[megacquire]

I'm using the Cassiopeia template for the desktop version and then mobilejoomla elegant template for the mobile version. I need to absorb what you've written. Since the templates are now under the media folder, could it be that some changes I made to the Cassiopeia template are not compatible with Joomla 4.4.4?

I still can't figure out what you're saying about the sitemap. I look at the screenshot and see the Main Menu, which is currently not appearing on the home page. The text are links to articles in Joomla. The text in gray boxes are just menu headings that don't link to anything.

Perhaps I should Reinstall Joomla! core files and see what happens. The update was successful, but something has gone terribly wrong.

Edit. Reinstalling the core files didn't work. I inspected the site in Firefox and see the error, but whatever info you got on the Network tab is a foreign language to me. I am serious about being clueless. Are these files that aren't normally in Joomla? Can they be deleted? Is this an easy fix?

It's a good thing I backed up the database and all the files before the update. If this is not an easy fix for a person like me who does not understand programming, it might be best for me to just wipe it all out and reinstall my backup. I hate to admit that over the years I've done that more times than I can count.

[megacquire]

I used my backup and went back to version 4.4.2. Everything is good now. I don't know if this would be considered problem solved since I am now hesitant to update again. Everything went to hell with that update to 4.4.4. I see I can now update to 4.4.5, but since everything is good right now, I'm leaving it as is. I've decided to just rebuild the site on my "test" domain using Joomla 5 and then put it live. I did that with another website and had no problems, and besides, I'll be forced to 5 eventually anyway.

Thank you for trying to help me. It sucks trying to do this when you don't understand computer programming, and I imagine it's difficult and frustrating for you to deal with people like me. I appreciate the help you gave me.

I also discovered that what I thought was missing (my home page) was actually there if I just scrolled down the page. Duh. I did more "inspecting" and found the huge blank area on that page was the space for the logo. I went to the other pages that were working correctly to inspect, and the logo programming was different on the pages that were working, versus the pages that weren't working. Since the logo is chosen in the Cassiopeia template styles, it doesn't make sense that some pages were doing things differently causing that huge blank space where the logo should have been.

Again, thank you. Your help was appreciated.

[pe7er]

You're welcome!

PS: I still would investigate why your site tries to load that uncommon f.php file.

[megacquire]

Well, it's messed up again. It was there all day yesterday looking good, but today it's back to crap. It makes no sense. I haven't touched a damn thing in between. Once I reverted back and it was looking good, I was done with it.

Doing the inspection, the logo on the pages that are messed up, I see this:

<img src="images/logo-1-21-23.png" loading="eager" decoding="async" alt="Acquisition Games" width="1500" height="313" class="lazy" data-src="https://acquisitiongames.com/images/logo-1-21-23.png" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7">

The logo on the pages that aren't messed up, I see this:

<img src="/images/logo-1-21-23.png" loading="eager" decoding="async" alt="Acquisition Games" width="1500" height="313" class="" data-src="https://acquisitiongames.com/images/logo-1-21-23.png" srcset="https://acquisitiongames.com/images/logo-1-21-23.png">

A page that works is https://acquisitiongames.com/index.php/ ... of-acquire.

That f.php file is:

<?php
/**
* Mobile Joomla! extension
* https://www.mobilejoomla.com/
*
* @version 3.5.1
* @license GNU/GPL v2 - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
* @copyright (C) 2008-2024 Kuneri Ltd. / Denis Ryabov
* @date February 2024
*/

$static_dir = __DIR__;
$root = dirname(dirname(dirname($static_dir)));

define('RESSIO_STATICDIR', $static_dir);
define('RESSIO_POWERED_BY', 'Mobile Joomla');

require $root . '/administrator/components/com_mobilejoomla/ress/fetch.php';

Because it's connected to MobileJoomla, and before I reverted back to 4.4.2, I disabled the Mobile Joomla plugin, but that didn't work. But now that I think about it, I think I also updated MobileJoomla when I updated Joomla, so maybe it's the latest version of that causing the problem. The mobile site is working and looks good though. I thought if it was the problem, the mobile site would be messed up, but it's not.

I'll revert back to an older version of MobileJoomla to see if that works. If reverting back doesn't help, perhaps I'll uninstall MobileJoomla, and then install the older version again. I may need to do that anyway. Ideas are coming to me as I type. I'll keep you posted. It's beginning to look like this isn't a Joomla problem.

[megacquire]

That was the problem. I'm now updated to Joomla 4.4.5 and everything works great!

[pe7er]

Good to see that you've solved it. Thanks for sharing your solution!