Joomla giving a blank page, but why?

July 23, 2009 12:03 PM

Joomla filter: Got a blank page after editing text of a module, but why?

My WoW guild's website is hosted on a site that uses Joomla and preset templates. Most everything is relatively locked down and the highest any of us can get (including the site/domain owner) is Administrator, not Super Administrator.

So today I was editing the text inside one of the modules with the WYSIWYG editor, nothing fancy or out of the ordinary. I save the text. Suddenly our site is giving blank pages. I have done an extensive bit of Googling on the problem, but 3 things stand out as out of the ordinary when it comes to this problem: a) working with Joomla 1.0.15, not 1.5 and not attempting to upgrade it, b) the administrator panel/site continues to work correctly, while the front-end and forums are giving blank pages, and c) the page source is not completely gone, but rather cuts off in the middle of the head section.

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on here? Since I'm not the site owner or the one paying for the hosting, it's not possible for me to contact the host (wowguilds.ca) directly and ask them what's up -- they wall off their support. I can't find anything that matches these details in searching Joomla problems, but maybe my Google-fu is weak here. The person who actually paid for the domain and hosting is kind of hard to contact at the moment, so if I can solve this myself it would be a huge relief.

Things I've tried: "unpublishing" the module I edited before this happened, unpublishing everything, republishing the things that were enabled before.

posted by asciident to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

My quasi-educated guess, given my limited experience with Joomla and extensive experience with php: it's probable a PHP error is being thrown by the module, and the result is that the index page (which is calling the module code) just stops executing due to the unhandled error. Hence, the blank page.

(Note -- this is all based on the above assumption of a php error of some sort)
First off -- google. There are pretty good forums over at Joomla where people talk about their issues with specific modules.
Second -- delete any content you've changed. I assume you've tried this.
Thrid -- I'm assuming you can't uninstall and reinstall the module, right?

The site admin would be able to take a look at the error logs and see the problem, but I'm guessing that's not going to happen.

What module specifically is causing problems? Is it a custom module, and not one of ones installed with Joomla? Can you contact the developer of the module? (again, the Joomla website is where I'd start when trying to track this down).

Oh -- on preview, I notice you've tried googling already. Start with the download page of the module in question. Go to the Joomla Extensions page from the main site, search for the module in question, and read the comments. Search the forums for the specific module name. Start with just a simple search on the module name and maybe 'blank', add qualifiers later to narrow down the search results if there are too many.
posted by cgg at 12:54 PM on July 23, 2009

Response by poster: cgg: The module was just a simple "custom module" that was really just text and HTML, nothing more. I edited it down to nothing and when that didn't work I deleted the module entirely. The problem wasn't resolved.

I figure it is a PHP error, but if that is the case I can't really do anything until the guy who pays the webhost can get in contact with them.
posted by asciident at 1:04 PM on July 23, 2009

My immediate worry is that the custom module you made somehow muddled up another module in the same position. Presumably there was already an existing module occupying that area, and if you made that new module by duplicating and editing an existing module, then you might have edited the "wrong" copy -- if you used the "original" ID copy for your "new" module, then when you edited/broken/deleted it you were left with an "old" module that has a different ID than it used to.

I've done that. If that's it, you need to find the module/article/menu that is looking for the original ID and fix it... or restore the original ID number to the old module.

I am admittedly guessing wildly, this is just the only thing that came to mind when I read your issue.
posted by Pufferish at 1:54 PM on July 23, 2009

Response by poster: Pufferfish: I didn't actually make the module. It was previously existing/in use/published on the site. All I tried to do was edit the text it was printing ... I didn't even touch any of the options outside of the WYSIWYG editor part of the module config page, so I really don't know how I could have done anything to the IDs.

Actually, looking at some of the other modules, it doesn't appear that I even have access to modify module IDs.
posted by asciident at 2:02 PM on July 23, 2009