joomla

more GoDaddy previewdns woes

Another note to self…

When you turn off GoDaddy hosting’s previewdns mode, the Joomla admin panel still directs you to http://support.previewdns.com/ anytime you apply a change, click cancel, etc. Clearing the Joomla cache, the browser cache, or switching browsers has no effect.

To correct this, you need to edit the configuration.php file in your root install directory. Edit the  var $live_site = to remove the reference to previewdns.com. You may need to change the permissions on this file before editing to allow write permissions for the owner, as it is read only by default (change it back after you’ve edited for safety).

Strangely this fixed some other perplexing problems I’d been having. While still in previewdns mode, I had tried configuring forms using both Chronoforms and Jforms. The drag and drop interface appeared broken in both. After ruling out browser issues, I concluded that there was something about preview mode that caused these to not work. So I told my client that I’d have to wait until the site was live to create the contact form. But, after the site was live, these form components still failed to work. Turns out that correcting the var $live_site corrected this immediately.

Joomla config on GoDaddy hosting

okay, this post is mainly a note to myself … since I’m so disorganized these days that if I write this down on paper, it will surely get lost. But, if someone else finds this in a search and it saves the hours of aggravation that I’ve had with this issue, then hurray!

Problem: SEF’s (search engine friendly URL’s) not working with Module Rewrite. Links to articles show either “404 not found” pages or message that says “no input item found”

Solution: Do the following:

  1. change htaccess.txt file to .htaccess
  2. edit .htaccess
    • comment out the line “Options +FollowSymLinks
    • If Joomla is not installed in the root directory – uncomment the line # RewriteBase / (and add the path to the Joomla root directory). Example: RewriteBase /jl if Joomla is installed in the jl directory
  3. In Joomla admin, edit Global Configuration/Site
    • Enable Search Engine Friendly URL’s and Use Apache mod_rewrite. *Add suffix to URL’s is optional*  – note, you must have write access for Web User to the configuration.php file or these changes will not apply.
  4. In Tools menu, Clean Cache – all files.
  5. Clear browser cache
  6. Test site