We got a call from a client this afternoon telling us that when logging in to his website, he was redirected to another login. He was seeing this error:
Use a valid username and password to gain access to the administrator backend.
We thought he was experiencing one of the many common login issues on Joomla. We were wrong…
When we checked the website, we noticed that he wasn’t even redirected to the standard Joomla login, he was being redirected to a completely different login (something similar to Joomla’s login but with no design/layout whatsoever). The new login link was also different, it was http://www.ourclientjoomlawebsite.com/v2/administrator/index.php/wp-admin/install.php.
We asked the client whether he did something just before the error happened, and he told us that he installed the WordPress for Joomla extension (which we think is a very poorly written extension but one that does the job) but he didn’t finalize the installation (e.g. he installed the extension but he didn’t go through configuring it). Aha! We immediately knew the cause of the problem, it’s most certainly a plugin being loaded by the new WordPress extension which was doing all this. The link the login was redirecting to contained the word wp-admin (which is a WordPress specific folder), a fact that confirmed our theory!
So, here’s what we did to fix the problem:
- We logged in to phpMyAdmin through our client’s cPanel.
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We clicked on the #__extensions table on the right (replace #__ with your database alias).
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We then searched for the User – WordPress entry and we set the enabled field for that entry to 1.
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The problem was solved – our client was able to login again to his website.
It’s amazing that even after all these years, we still are seeing login problems that we have not seen before! That’s what makes our job so beautiful – there’s something new every day – a new challenge and a new solution!
If you’re having a similar login issue on your Joomla website, and if the above is not working for you (or you don’t know how to implement it), then fret not, we’re here to the rescue! All you need to do is to contact us and we’ll make sure the problem is resolved in no time and for a very low cost.