Manual update required for Admin Tools Professional 4.0.0

Due to an issue with Admin Tools 4.0.0.b1 to 4.0.0 inclusive, users of the Professional release must update manually to this new version.

Nature of the problem

The Professional version's downloads, including updates, are not free of charge. You need a valid subscription to download them. We implement this check on our site by means of the Download ID you enter in our component.

However, Joomla cannot directly read the download ID from the component's configuration. It has to be placed in a special format in the database. Every time you visit Admin Tools' control panel page we check if the Download ID is in the database in the correct format and set it if missing.

Due to a bug in Admin Tools 4.0.0 and its preceding Beta and Release Candidate versions a blank Download ID was put in Joomla's database. This means that Joomla tries to use an invalid URL to download the update package for Admin Tools, making it impossible to update automatically.

Mitigation (manual update)

The ONLY way to fix it is to perform a manual update. There are two methods to update manually: using install from URL or using the simpler upload and install method.

VERY IMPORTANT: No matter which method you use, do NOT uninstall Admin Tools before updating it. Doing so will cause all of your settings and data to be deleted.

Install from URL method

This is the same process Joomla follows internally when you update Admin Tools. Therefore it's usually the safest bet to installing / manually updating our extension.

1. Go to the Download page on our site.
2. Under the Admin Tools header click on the All Files button. It takes you to a new page with download items.
3. Under the Admin Tools Professional header click on the More Information link. It opens a big pane right below it with lots of information.
4. Inside this pane, right under the text, you'll see a big blue Download now button and next to it a DirectLink link. Right click on the DirectLink link and select Copy Link Address (this may be called Copy Link, Copy URL or something similar on your browser).
5. Log in to your site's administrator backend.
6. Go to Extensions, Manage and click on the Install From URL tab.
7. In the Install From URL field paste the URL you copied in step 4.
8. Click on Check and Install.
9. After the installation is complete please go to Components, Admin Tools to let our software update Joomla's database.

This method fails on some servers because they don't allow Joomla to download files directly. If you are on such a server you couldn't use Joomla's one-click extensions update anyway so you'll have to use the Upload and Install method instead.

Upload and Install method

1. Download the latest version of Admin Tools from our site.
2. Log in to your site's administrator backend.
3. Go to Extensions, Manage and click on the Upload Package File tab.
4. Click the Extension package file field and choose the ZIP file you downloaded in step 1.
5. Click on Upload & Install.
6. After the installation is complete please go to Components, Admin Tools to let our software update Joomla's database.

If you have trouble with the Upload and Install method

If you are using a computer running the Mac OS X operating system and use the Safari web browser the first step will result in the ZIP file being extracted instead of being downloaded. You can either change that option in Safari or simply use another browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome to avoid this issue altogether.

For any other issue please consult our very thorough extension installation troubleshooting guide (it applies to all components, even components which are not our own). Alternatively, use the fully manual installation method described in our documentation.

I asked for support about this issue but all I got is a link to this page and my ticket was closed. Why?

In order to be most efficient in providing support we chose to publish this page with all the information we can provide on the subject. We want everyone affected to be able to read it and apply the mitigation described. Any further extension installation issues you may face can be solved by reading the extension installation troubleshooting guide according to our ten years of experience. If you have an issue after installing the update please file a new ticket as it doesn't pertain to the update issue.