You can determine if a problem is caused by Admin Tools or not by performing the following troubleshooting steps:
- Try setting the Error Reporting level in your Global Configuration to "None". Many errors are caused by harmless PHP Notices and Warnings being output to the browser, breaking anything which requires HTTP header manipulation such as Joomla!'s session management, AJAX calls and download systems.
- Try to replicate the issue after disabling the "System - Admin Tools" plugin. To do that, first go to Web Application Firewall and set Defend Against Plugin Deactivation to No. If you can still replicate the issue after disabling the plugin then it is not caused by Admin Tools. Disabling that plugin means that Admin Tools code (including the Web Application Firewall) is not running on your site.
- If you suspect an issue with the .htaccess file, replace its contents with the contents of the stock htaccess.txt file shipped with every version of Joomla!. On some hosts you may have to wait for 1-30 minutes for the changes to be effective. Then, retry loading the problem page. If you can still reproduce the error, then it is not caused by .htaccess Maker.
If doing any of the above resulted in the issue still occurring, it's not related with Admin Tools. If doing any of the above did stop the issue from occurring, you'll have to do some troubleshooting, depending on what you determined causes your problem.
If the problem is caused by Admin Tools' plugin
Go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Configure WAF. Make sure "Log security exceptions" is set to Yes; if it's not, set it to Yes and click on Save & Close. Now try reproducing your issue. Immediately after that, please go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Blocked Requests Log.
If you always see the same or one of a few IP addresses on all blocked requests regardless of where the user came from you will need to go to Joomla's Global Configuration and set Behind Load Balancer to Yes. The idea is that when your site is behind a load balancer, reverse proxy, or CDN the same (or one of a few) IP address is always reported to your web server. We need the real IP of the visitor which exists only inside an HTTP header. Turning on Joomla's Behind Load Balancer option does exactly that. This Joomla feature uses code we wrote for Admin Tools and contributed back to Joomla a long time ago.
If that was not the case, look at the latest log entry at the top. It should have the date and time of when the issue occurred, and your IP address. The Reason corresponds to the WAF feature blocking the request; you can see the mapping in the documentation, along with links to the respective feature's documentation. Some issues are relatively frequent and have standard solutions or troubleshooting steps. You can find these in the documentation; look under Troubleshooting guide in the documentation's index.
If you don't understand what to do, give us the name of the extension, and the Reason and Target URL you see in the Security Exceptions Log so we can help you.
If the problem is caused by the .htaccess Maker
If your problem was caused by the .htaccess Maker you will have to read the general .htaccess troubleshooting page, as well as the page on finding out necessary .htaccess exceptions. You can find these pages and more troubleshooting instructions in the documentation; look under Troubleshooting guide in the documentation's index.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
