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Site Restoration

#40348 Restoring site to localhost with WAMPserver

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Joomla!
CMS Version
3 (last version)
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
8.0.4

Latest post by tampe125 on Thursday, 29 February 2024 02:23 CST

wd5mush

Sorry not to have all the release details, but cannot access them at the moment!

I have handed over responsibility for the site I have been managing to someone else who has now set up a new site with a different hosting company.  Unfortunately, they cut over to the new site before I had the chance to set up a copy of the old site on the WAMP server on my home machine.

I have recovered a JPA file from the old server and intended setting up a copy of the old site on my PC.  The site was still running the last version of Joomla 3 - which was why it needed to be replaced(!), but I wanted an accessible copy in case any key information was needed.

Using kickstart 8.0 4 all appeared to go correctly when I restored the site to my local server, except I now get an 'Unable to connect' screen when I attempt to access any of the pages.  I have disabled .htaccess by renaming it.

I have wondered if it might be to do with the fact that the live site was https:// and of course my local server is http://  The default URL shows as https://localhost... Could this be the problem?  If so, have you any suggestions on how do I fix it?

Thanks for your patience

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Yes, that is definitely part of the problem.

For context of what I am about to say, please refer to this documentation page: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-joomla/angie-joomla-setup.html

When restoring the site, you will reach the penultimate page of the restoration called Site Setup. Over there, make the following choices:

  • Live Site URL: leave empty
  • Force SSL: None
  • Cookie domain: leave empty
  • Cookie path: leave empty
  • Override tmp and log paths: checked
  • Rename .user.ini or php.ini files from the main site directories: checked if it is not grayed out (does not apply when it is grayed out)
  • Replace main .htaccess file with default: checked
  • Delete the .htaccess and .htpasswd files in the administrator directory: checked if it is not grayed out (does not apply when it is grayed out)

If the site also has Admin Tools Professional you will need to temporarily disable it and edit the Allowed Domains in the Configure WAF page. Please note that localhost is automatically allowed even if it's not on the list. However, if localhost resolves to an IP address outside the 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 block (the 127.0.0.1 to 127.254.254.254 range) for some odd reason you will have to do what I describe in this paragraph. Again, this would be extremely irregular and I strongly doubt Windows would even be able to boot with a misconfiguration like that, but I've seen weirder things in my life.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

wd5mush

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks for all the advice, today is the first chance I have had to take it on board.

The good news is that I am now able to load and view my site.  The bad news is that I am unable to bring up the back end, and my site automatically diverts to the front end home page.

I tried using the

http://www.example.com/administrator/index.php?admintools_rescue=[email protected] syntax and that works to the extent that I get the "Check your email for Rescue URL information" message, but I get no email.  It is possible that is to do with using my PC and the email config may not be right.

Something that might be relevant is that I use the http://www.example.com/administrator/index.php?keyword feature.  Can this be bypassed?

I have also renamed .htaccess to htaccess.bak but that does not appear to make any difference.  I have not made any changes to php.ini and do not appear to have a .htpasswd file in my root folder.

I was going to create a default .htaccess file but the link from the help page https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joomla/joomla-cms/staging/htaccess.txt does not appear to work.  I also checked the administrator folder to see if there were any .ht files, but could not see any.

Any mpre (polite!) thoughts?

tampe125
Akeeba Staff

Hello,

I'm taking this ticket since Nicholas is currently unavailable.

You can fix your issue by simply disabling Admin Tools, please take a look at this page: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/admin-tools/web-application-firewall.html#help-locked-out

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

wd5mush

Thanks Davide, that fixed it!  Akeeba documentation is good, but not always easy to find the key bit. 

Now to tidy things up again.

tampe125
Akeeba Staff

You're welcome!

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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