It seems that when upgrading to 1.0.13 from 1.0.12 (and maybe earlier versions aswell) of Joomla!, that administrator passwords or even the Super Administrators are either deleted (?? somehow) or the fields have been changed. This means you are totally locked out from the backend. For a newbie this is more than just “distressing”, but even for long-time Joomla! users that have little to no experience with issues such as this, it is just as frustrating when looking for fixes and how-tos (myself included). Many people feel totally lost when reading tutorials on how to reset passwords or make a new Super Administrator with PHP MyAdmin because, let’s face it, most web designers or website owners aren’t advanced SQL or PHP users, heck they’re not even beginners most of the time and advanced users speak in advanced terms and it’s difficult to understand.

Apparently, Joomla! 1.0.13 now “salts” the hashed passwords as an additional security measure. There are numerous threads at Joomla’s forum about people not being able to log in after upgrading to 1.0.13. Here is a thread which contains a fix for admin session issues. I didn’t apply the fix as after reading a few threads about this, it doesn’t seem to be the problem I had.

I was able to fix my issue by changing the password with PHP MyAdmin, however I did have two Super Administrators before and after upgrading, one vanished into thin air. The other I was able to fix. *phew*

Tags: joomla
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