So, I just noticed some strange things going on with my website. I think I haven’t changed anything for more than a year… even maybe more. A few days ago I checked it and it was absolutely fine. And now the home page is white with only an “Error” message in the left top corner.
So I tried to investigate what was going on. When I go to the “Global Configuration” I get this error :
An error has occurred. 0 Missing field in database: Joomla\CMS\Table\Extension extension_id.
I wanted to make a backup. So I logged in to FTP and I noticed that the site directory has 00 as permission
If I go to file attributes it’s shown 755 permission. I tried to change it, but it doesn’t give me access and it remains 00. I’ve never before seen this. I also tried through the file manager and I can’t access the directory, getting the following error :
Error during FTP change directory, permission denied at: “/mywebsite.com/htdocs”.
Can someone please suggest a solution? What’s going on?
Yep! That actually solved the problem. Well partally. I guess at that moment when I was trying to access my website via FTP, the host was down. So 2 days later I was able to access my website. I just made a backup and updated the Joomla to 3.10.12 directly. I’ve also automatically updated all of the other updates for plugins and modules. But still nothing. There was only SP Page Builder Pro, to which I needed to make an update manually. So I’ve updated to v3.8.10. And the website was back All good.
Except for one small detail… sending mail with gmail forwarding doesn’t work now. Any suggestions?
Are you using an App Password for the SMTP password? Google blocks login if you are using your Gmail password and do not have Less Secure Apps support enabled. Also, I’m pretty sure that Gmail supports STARTTLS on port 587, so you may want to switch to that, too.
This setting is not available for accounts with 2-Step Verification enabled. Such accounts require an application-specific password for less secure apps access.
If you want to send email using your Gmail account, you basically have one option. Enable 2FA, create an App Password, then use that App Password as the password to authenticate your SMTP. There’s XOAUTH2 but you may have trouble setting that up for such a simple use case as this.
Also, you don’t have to use Gmail. You can use any SMTP service you want. If you don’t like how Google does authentication, you can choose an email provider that fits your needs better.
All good.