Joomla access

I’m trying to edit some content on this site. It appears to be that it is running on joomla. I’ve never used joomla, so my first question is; is this site running on joomla? (I have built a few sites in wordpress)

Based on Wappalyzer it is. Also, this page does exist and I can see some joomla files in the directory.

http://newportsportsclub.com/administrator/

I’ve opened the configuration.php file and thought that I found the username and password, but they aren’t working.

This is what I found.

var $password = ‘PasswordIsHere’;
public $root_user = ‘UsernameIsHere’;

Well, I think this is a simple issue and I should be able to figure out the password from the files on the ftp, but need a lil help.

Must I use the phpmyadmin to figure these out or reset these??

Well at first I thought it didn’t look like any Joomla I’ve ever seen but looking at the URL structure I would say it is (index.php?option=bla-bla-bla).

I don’t think you’ll find the username & password in the database because they probably encrypt the password when it hits the DB. You can pull the password field from the database but it will be hashed and you won’t be able to decrypt it.

Here’s a little documentation that might help out: http://docs.joomla.org/How_you_reset_an_administrator_password%3F

That does look to be a Joomla website.

I just was playing with it this weekend, because someone contacted me about their website.

There are two sets of passwords - one for the database and one for the Joomla backend.
What is in the configuration.php is for the database.

From my playing with Joomla, I can say that I really really do not like it.

Yeah, I’ve never been a fan of Joomla myself but I understand that many people do like it as a web building platform. I’m more of a Drupal/civiCRM developer myself.

I am not sure I will like Drupal any better.

My problem with Joomla is that it isn’t intuitive for me.
I even bought a Joomla for Dummies book.

And what gets me revved up is that this website I am looking at was developed by people who apparently design all their websites using Joomla without fully understanding how it works.
I don’t understand how people who do this fulltime can be that lacking in their primary job.

Well exactly… If you’re going to use a sophisticated tool for developing your wares, you need to know how to use it right!

When I finally chose to go the Drupal path, I learned everything I could about it and continue consuming new tips and techniques to this day. I began with it about 6 years ago and hired a very competent developer to get me up to speed; I continue working with him today although I have a very good understanding of Drupal now.

I too often see Drupal, Joomla, WordPress site that are assembled by people who don’t have a clue and they leave the client with a substandard site and a bad opinion of the underlying CMS. I inherited two very large ones last year. The Joomla one wasn’t even a complete installation. It was a hacked version of Joomla and didn’t work worth a darn. We moved it to Drupal 7. The other was a Drupal 6 site built by a very well known agency in town and I had to strip it down and reconfigure it to make it right. There were insanely stupid mistakes throughout and a lack of understanding of how the CMS works.

Oh well, I say learn your tools well and then you can at least fix the poor developer’s mistakes and become the go-to person.

Unlike you I don’t do website development work fulltime.
I do PC software development in my day job.

This website isn’t huge.
It currently is selling about 20 or so items. The shopping cart I am told is broken.
There are broken links.

The ambitious goal was to have a 3-in-1 ecommerce to essentially have 3 different websites.
One website for the consumer, one for the retailers, and one for B2B sales.
The person probably paid $600 upwards to $1150 for it along with 2 years of hosting.
If she was to hire a real Joomla expert, she’s probably in for a shock how much a “real” developer is going to charge her.

That’s for sure but it’s another part of the problem. Someone offered to build something with a great deal of expectation for less that they should have budgeted for proper planning. For the sites I develop, I usually include a component of the budget for meetings and correspondence and it is usually larger than their entire budget.

Without looking into the specifics of the site, I would expect they should be prepared to look at x10 that budget and probably more.

Yeah, if you had told her that it was going to cost her $6000 for her website, she’d go running to this company that she found.
Typical.

The problem is that to her the only problem is that her shopping cart doesn’t work.
Supposedly she is not getting notified when an order is received.
Goodness knows what else is broken.
To me, credit card processing is something where there is no margin for error.
I am leery of buying from no-name websites for this reason.

the username / password found in the configuration.php is the database user / password.

To find the joomla username you will need to go into the phpmyadmin

Once in the phpmyadmin > find users table

in that find the super user > usually username would be admin or something like that

then click on edit

Then once in the edit mode you will see Password field with some value

write a new password in plain text > say you want to write Joomla as your password write that > then in function select PASSWORD

and save

now you can go to the administrator section and enter the username and the password that you just created

you will be able to login