Locked out of Admin

[waarnemer]

Then I think you need to contact your hosting provider to ask if you really are targeting the correct db.

Since your front end does show ok.
The prefix says "tjgae" but it shows "jos" in PHPMyAdmin.

I think there is a misconfiguration in your hosting environment somewhere....

BUT a simple test.... in configuration.php, change the prefix to "jos_" if site doesn't break, you may have regained access.... if it doesn't... revert to your old setup......

(make backups!!!!)

[Pim Feijen]

Okay, I will not mention the prefixes again. I really did not know that this information could be misused...

[Pim Feijen]

This forum is truly amazing. You really are helpfull. Even though it is friday night and you should drink beers in a nice bar:-)
Thank you all very much!
Best regards
Pim

[waarnemer]

I think it is to early for @sozzled now... ... I'll have one though... cheers..

[sozzled]

Let's quickly recap:

I suddenly got locked out of the admin panel of one of my Joomla´s (3.x).

That's all we know. "Suddenly" and "J! 3.x". So, what changed to cause this suddenness and which one of the seventy-five releases made to J! 3 in the last seven years are we talking about?

While it's bright and early here on a Saturday morning in Australia, it may not be the best time of the day in Denmark to be fiddling around, making changes. Your website isn't going anywhere. Leave it for the day. Any changes you make tonight, in a hurry or in a panic, could be disastrous.

I agree with all the other suggestions made by other contributors to this discussion. And, while I understand what they're saying, it might be a good idea to take a break, have a good night's sleep, and re-read everything again when you're fresh in the morning. We're not going anywhere either. OK?

Cheers.

[Pim Feijen]

You are absolutely right, Sozzled!
Cheers:-)

[Webdongle]

The database and table prefix (that are used) are defined in Joomla's configuration.php file. Read them from the file (do NOT change them) then you ill know which table to add the hash code to

[waarnemer]

springs to mind...
since your site has been updated and upgraded a gzillion times... it may very well be your hosting provider upgraded PHP several times to by now.

You probably started at PHP 5.3 but may have a 7.2 by now.
A move from 5 to 7 may have broken some stuff. (the "all of a sudden!" you only need one active extension that cannot handle PHP7.x to may be break the back end, been there too)
A move from 1.6 to 2.5 or up, may also have involved the migration to another database.. you may not know which one by location, the hostingcompany did not tie the one to your web host..
Check (without telling us of course) what your configuration.php has as credentials. Are they similar to the ones you use when logging in into PHPMyAdmin?

So much that could have gone wrong......

[Pim Feijen]

You probably are right. The website is about 7 years old. I have had some weird trouble before but was always able to fix it. Last time I was (and could get!) in, the search function didn´t work. Really strange because I am the only one that updates the site and nothing was installed or updated at that time.
But would this mean that you have to do a fresh Joomla install and start from scratch every 5 years or so? That would be terrible in my case because this site is huge...

By the way, I contacted the provider to find out if there where server changes.

[Webdongle]

...
But would this mean that you have to do a fresh Joomla install and start from scratch every 5 years or so? ...

No, not if you use good extensions and identify problems with them when they stop working after updates. Unlike 'flat' sites, interactive sites need regular maintenance much like any machine that has moving parts.

[sozzled]

As I wrote before,

Let's quickly recap:

I suddenly got locked out of the admin panel of one of my Joomla´s (3.x).

That's all we know. "Suddenly" and "J! 3.x". So, what changed to cause this suddenness and which one of the seventy-five releases made to J! 3 in the last seven years are we talking about?

If you would like us to give any more help apart from what we've already written (i.e. see https://docs.joomla.org/How_do_you_reco ... assword%3F), and if that help is not working for you, then I suggest you use the Forum Post Assistant reporting tool.

The ball is back in your court.

[Pim Feijen]

I am sorry that I can not be more precise about my problem. I can not check the Joomla version (because I can´t login). I don´t know when it happened or what I did when it went wrong.
I´m a designer that uses Joomla as a webdesign tool and I don´t know anything about PHP or databases.
I tried your link and the video that I mentioned before (This is really the first time in my life that I added something to a database).
Nothing works.
I really do appreciate the help and tips and tricks that you gave me. I will not ask for more help.
There must be something very wrong with my Joomla and I will tell my client that I can not solve the problem.

Thanks a million for now.
Best regards

[sozzled]

Let me reflect back to you what we know about your problem. We know three things:

1) You are using J! 3.x. Fair enough. We're all using J! 3.x. There have been seventy-five releases of J! 3.x.

2) This problem occurred "suddenly".

3) We don't know anything else. We're just guessing.

Now I would also like to suggest that the "video" you watched was probably a complete waste of your time (unless you know the answers to points 1 and 2 above).

I don't know if there's something wrong or "very wrong" with your installation of J! because, if I was to say that, I would only be guessing.

When you wrote that you tried "my link", I assume you mean https://docs.joomla.org/How_do_you_reco ... assword%3F. Well, the information contained on that page needs to be read carefully. It's a "general" solution. To use the solution, you need to know which database is associated with your website, which table prefix is used by your website and which table contains the users. If you don't know these things then the "link" is useless.

What we're trying to ascertain is that information. Database, tables, table prefixes. I'm guessing that the user information exists in the table tjgae_users but if you can't find it, or you don't know how to look for it, then that's a problem, isn't it?

Basically, this should be a two-minute job. It should not take 40+ exchanges on a forum to get to the stage where no-one knows the location of the [database] "haystack", the composition of said "haystack" in order to find the elusive "needle" in that "haystack".

You don't need to login to "check your Joomla version"; the Forum Post Assistant [FPA] does all of that work for you. As long as you know where the files—the files belonging to the problem website—are located, it takes a few minutes to read the documentation about how to download the FPA files, place the file fpa-en.php in the same folder you found the file configuration.php, enter the URL your-site-name/fpa-en.php in the browser, click a few buttons, copy/paste the BBcode as a reply on the forum, and you're half-way towards getting the answers you're looking for.

I'm trying to keep this brief. I really don't know what else I can tell you unless I sat down with you for half-an-hour or more, and talked you through the process.