New Joomla installation on MWEB - cant reach index.php

Napalm2880

Napalm2880

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Let me start off by saying I've been in the IT industry for a while but I've never had a chance or the inclination to put a website together. This was until I thought I'd give the MWEB uncapped hosting a go...

My end goal is to build an online store with a payment portal and I've decided to go with Joomla as the CMS.

MWEB certainly have not made this very easy and even when registering the host with them, I was blocked by a bug which stops you from registering the domain (I managed to figure a way around this) during the signup process. Another gripe is that you are forced to create a 2nd MWEB account username and password for the uncapped hosting and are not given the choice to use your existing account. Another gripe is that once logged in to the hosting portal - lets just say that user-friendly and great UI would not be words I'd use to describe it. Documentation is also pretty much non-existent. Surely MWEB could write up a little tutorial or something for people such as myself to set up a Wordpress or Joomla managed site on their hosting platform?

Despite all of the above I've managed to get to the point where I gained FTP access and uploaded the Joomla installation files by doing a binary transfer using the Filezilla client (All file permissions look correct and directory structure looks standard).

However I am still unable to access the Joomla installation (index.php page) and keep getting the following message:

Welcome
This domain has been registered
on behalf of our customer by
MWEB BUSINESS

This is the default start.html page that MWEB put into your root directory (which is displayed even though I deleted it out of the root dir). I should make mention that I am accessing my host by ip address as 24 hours down the line, my domain name is still not registered (they say this could take up to 72hrs in the T&C's). Could this be part of the problem?
 
i went down this road with a friend....

short of it, gave up, registered a new domain with hetzner,
 
I recall vaguely something like this that happened to me.

On your site there are a few start pages that are prioritised i.e. if you had an index.php and a index.html; one of them is a higher priority than the other.

Might be something like this?

I think in my case I just deleted any other index-like file via filezilla. Obviously backed up.
 
Bizarre thing is that its still the MWEB landing page being displayed even though I removed it from the root directory? :wtf:
 
I should make mention that I am accessing my host by IP address as 24 hours down the line
Click to expand...

That is the problem. As it is a shared hosting server with multiple websites hosted you must use the domain name and not the IP address to access your own space on the server.
 
If it's not a dedicated server than accessing the IP address should produce some random unchangeable default page not linked to your site at all. (what Franna said)
If it is dedicated, there could be a redirect in an htaccess file or something. Did you delete everything on the server (or in the public_html or some such folder) before uploading the Joomla install files?
 
Thanks Franna&Random717! I thought that may be the problem - I'm on shared hosting. Since my last post, my domain name has now become active and I can now access the Joomla installation page by http://www.[my_domain_name].co.za/

As I said originally, wish there was more documentation ;-(
 
Must admit that I'm not very impressed with MWEB hosting. I have no problem with the functionality but more the implementation. It looks like it was hacked together a very long time ago and is in desperate need of an overhaul. The interface/documentation for noobs is horrible. Its free hosting so I really cant complain too much but it would have been a different story had I paid something for it.

To be fair, in their long winded legal notice they mention up to 72 hours for domain registration. But as you say, they could have sent a courtesy email.
 
Hi,

I have been having this exact same problem. How did you eventually solve it? I cannot access the installation file and the home page just shows the mweb page saying 'this page is unavailable'.

Thanks.
 
Well there were two things I was doing wrong:

1.) Trying to access the site via IP address. -> you cant do this on shared hosting, only on dedicated hosting.
2.) You will have to be patient and wait for MWEB to replicate the DNS records (expect about a day or two for this to happen from registration). After this happens, the problem 'should' go away.

Hope that helps.
 
Sejadu said:
Hi,

I have been having this exact same problem. How did you eventually solve it? I cannot access the installation file and the home page just shows the mweb page saying 'this page is unavailable'.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

your problem sounds different. op's issue was that the dns hadn't propagated yet.
yours sounds like a 404 because you're entering an invalid url.
with most cms's, you should just be able to point the browser to the domain name and the install script takes it from there (assuming it doesn't have a higher priority index file in the webroot).

there's a few things that result in shared hosting not working:

1. coza isn't registered - check co.za whois to see if it's registered
2. nameservers aren't configured - query the ns listed in coza with dig to see that then NS main A record points to the right ip.
3. nameserver query is cached - override dns resolution by hardcoding the ip in your local hosts file.
4. webserver isn't configured - remove/modify the index in webroot to check that your host is using the right webroot.
5. webserver is configured (can surf to individual files), but site isn't loading - check to see that the default index page is correct.
 
Last edited:
Napalm2880 said:
Well there were two things I was doing wrong:

1.) Trying to access the site via IP address. -> you cant do this on shared hosting, only on dedicated hosting.
2.) You will have to be patient and wait for MWEB to replicate the DNS records (expect about a day or two for this to happen from registration). After this happens, the problem 'should' go away.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

you can actually override dns by hardcoding it into your hosts file. that way you can tell if the server is correctly set up in advance.
 
Thanks for all your feedback.

Unfortunately I'm not very clued up on these things so I'm not sure where to even start. I'm going to have to contact mweb and see if they can help out.
 
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