Locked outta Joomla Admin

kikel

Hey All,
I was messing around with a joomla site of mine last night installing and testing ext. virtuemart.
I've remember changing loads of stuff, but now i can't log into the admin panel. I've changed something and it's not the password.

IF i put the wrong password into the admin panel it tells me the username\password are incorrect. IF i put in the correct username\password in just returns the login page. No errors, nothing.

So, my question is this, how do i log into the site or reset my password. So i can check \ reset any changes i made last night.

daymobrew

Can you access the error log for your web site? It might give you some clues as to what to change.
Maybe you will end up needing to rename a directory (thus temporarily hiding it from Joomla) so get in. Once in you might be able to rename the directory again and then delete the plugin.

kikel

Thanks for the reply. Where is the error log for a joomla website. I've unsuccesfully tried google to find the info.

I've got FTP access.

I can log into the front end with my password but not the backend.

daymobrew

Can you log into the hosting control panel? (lower level than Joomla).

Villain

If you get onto your hosting control panel:

A. You cannot recover the existing password, but you can reset it to a new password.
The passwords are stored using a one-way MD5 hash which prevents recovering the password.
But you can reset the password by editing the password field in the database.
Set the password to a known value and then you may log-in using that new password.

The password is stored in the MySQL database jos_users table password field. (change this for your table prefix if different)
Use a MySQL utility such as phpMyAdmin or MySQL Query Browser to edit this field.
Open the table, find your admin username, and then select that row for editing.
The password must be hashed, you cannot simply enter text into this field.

Set the password to a known value
- password = "this is the MD5 hashed password"

---

- admin = 21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3
- secret = 5ebe2294ecd0e0f08eab7690d2a6ee69
- OU812 = 7441de5382cf4fecbaa9a8c538e76783
Paste the hashed password into the field, save the change, and log-in using the new password

kikel

I will give it a shot later when i'mback in front of a computer. But I don't it will work if it I can log into the front end. Anyway I'll keep ye updated

cheers