Joomla 4 Update Error Help

Joomla 4 is here, but it your site ready? Have you accidentally updated your site and now you only see a big error screen? 

Sorry, there was a problem we could not recover from!

First, if you are looking for immediate help and need your site restored quickly. 
Open a support ticket and we can get your site back up and running asap. 

If you are looking for solutions on how to restore your website here are some steps that you can take. 

1. Backup

Before you do anything access your webhost and take backups of your public_html folder and your database. 

Just in case things go from bad to worse you want to have your files and database saved. 

2. Do you have any backups? 

We use Akeeba Backup to run our own daily backups on each site. This allows us to quickly restore websites if an error were to occur. This has saved us a couple times. Without this we would have much bigger issues. 

Your web host should actually have backups. This depends greatly on the webhost. Some hosts will have a daily backup and others weekly.

There may be a fee and you have to contact them or the backups are easily restorable from the backend. You will have to contact your host to see what your options are. 

3. Use FTP to restore admin access. 

If you are unable to access or do anything in the admin area, you can restore this portion by overwriting your existing install with a full Joomla package. This will not solve the issue, however it will give you access to certain portions.

It may also correct things on the front end so that your public side is back up and running allowing you more time to sort through the issue. 

Joomla 4 does change your database structure so you will still need to rework your site to correct it. 

4. Rebuild your website. 

At this point you may need to rebuild your website. This process will vary based on the website, however for most basic sites this will be the easiest solution. 

Start in a sub folder, install a fresh Joomla package, install your main components, then use your backup of the database to copy over existing content via SQL. We have used this method for a number of sites now and it is the cleanest method that gets clients back on track quickly. 

5. Get some help. 

If this process seems overwhelming contact us. We would love to help you get your website back on track. 

Have you found any other solutions that have worked for rolling back your website from a Joomla 4 error to a Joomla 3 Stable site? Please leave them in the comments below.