CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I have a clean Joomla 2.5 site...was using Virtuemart for events, but their latest update simply does not work.

CiviCRM is a bit overkill for what I need, but I had tried to install it back with Joomla 2.5.3 with no luck.

1st issue:

I uploaded the "alt" version to the server and tried to install. Continued to get the PHP does not have zip support error message even after checking for the hidden zip file.

As it turns out the configure.php file still has the zip code in it and however joomla 2.5.4 is checking for the zip file(file_exists) it is setting off the error. Removing the following code allows the install:

    // Path to the archive
    $archivename = $adminPath . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'civicrm.zip';

    // a bit of support for the non-alternaive joomla install
    if ( file_exists( $archivename ) ) {
        // ensure that the site has native zip, else abort
        if ( ! function_exists('zip_open') ||
             ! function_exists('zip_read') ) {
            echo "Your PHP version is missing  zip functionality. Please ask your system administrator / hosting provider to recompile PHP with zip support.<p>";
            echo "If this is a new install, you will need to uninstall CiviCRM from the Joomla Extension Manager.<p>";
            exit( );
        }

        $extractdir  = $adminPath;
        JArchive::extract( $archivename, $extractdir);
    }

2nd issue:

The civiCRM backend did not appear in the Joomla menu. Using the browser as <your joomla site>/administrator/?option=com_civicrm does work.

The backend was fully functioning and I was able to create an event / templates / price sets.

I tried all the "task" browser menu resets and tool items with out luck.

After some poking around in the database I found that the "_menu" item for COM_CIVICRM_MENU was in the database, but it was missing the component ID.....I retrieved the ID from the Joomla extention manager (mine was 10119) and entered it. That brought the CiviCRM up in the joomla menu.

3rd issue:

After I had created the event, it supplied a link to the front end. The front end always led to a 404 error. I used joomla debug to see that the joomla.php (civiCRM) was creating the error even for a registered user. I used the civiCrm backend to allow non users access to the event info and registration and now the Frontend links are also working.

I know that Joomla 2.5 had a rough start...and some functions have been changed as they move forward, so perhaps your installer has not kept up.

In any case the above tricks helped me move forward with this great system, hope this helps others.

rd

Extensions>>>Extensions Manager

In extension manager click the "Manage" tab. Find "CiviCRM" and get the "Id" from the last column (mine was 10119). This Id number depends on your system and what you have installed (and in what order they were installed).

Now you will have to go into the database to see if you have the problem that I did.

On my server I use Cpanel....so from my Cpanel administration page and I log into phpMyAdmin.

You have to select your Joomala database....it will usually end in "_Jos1. I only use one database so mine includes both Civicrm items and Joomla tables. You are looking for a joomla table that ends in "_menu" .... mine is called j17_menu because I kept the Joomla 1.7 labels for consistency.

look through the data list and find an item with the "Title" of "COM_CIVICRM_MENU" check to see that it has the "component id" equal to what you found in step 1 above.

Mine was set to 0...so it did not work. You can select edit to change the component Id from the item and save the changes.

Once I had done this CiviCRM with icon was now available in the component menu item of the Joomla administration console. This made the backend of Civicrm available and it is fully functional. I already have the event registration module Live on my website.

If you know SQL you can search for it quickly, I had to look through the database because I did not know what I was looking for.

Hope it helps,
rd