If you’ve been trying to install a quickstart package received after a template purchase, and the installation freezes at the database creation/restoration step you might have to make few changes in the server/PHP environment in order to fix the issue.
Funny, but sometimes problems are in fact not related to Joomla itself - in most cases I needed to give assistance the culprit was a browser addon having ad blocking features, like Adblock Plus . Check your browser, and if you have something like that, please disable it for a while. If this doesn’t help let’s try the next tip.
Turn Off Display Error in PHP environment
For correct install process the display_errors directive must be disabled. You can set PHP error reporting off in the php.ini file or in .user.ini file (in case you have access to this file). Check with your hoster, what you are allowed to do there - or ask for their help, if they does not let you tweak on your end the PHP environment.
Supposing thet you have access, locate the display_errors directive - or if you don't have it, enter it into a new linke like this:
display_errors = Off
If you have installed your server with the help of XAMPP or other locally set up testing/development environment, check the documentation for information on where to find the php.ini file. Don’t forget to stop Apache server before doing any modifications and start it again after saving these modifications.
If you have no access to the php.ini file but you can modify the .htaccess file on your server (found in the root of your public_html folder – your Joomla! 3.x site), try to add the following code there: php_flag display_errors off. If your modifications in this file have no effects, or you end up with an ugly Server 500 error try asking your webhosting provider to disable error reporting.
If you don’t have the ability to change this, especially for Joomla 2.5, then in the /installation folder inside the index.php file at the beginning (line ~13) please add:
ini_set('display_errors', 0);
– upload the changed file and try to install again!.
Magic Quotes
another known troublemaker is the Magic Quotes directive. It’s preferable to disable this also; if it is enabled you will probably get problems with saving module settings. Magic Quotes is a process that automatically releases incoming data to the PHP script. This feature has been REMOVED in PHP 5.4, so you probably don't need to do the gfollowing steps, if you have newer PHP.
To disable it use
magic_quotes_gpc = Off magic_quotes_runtime = Off magic_quotes_sybase = Off
inside php.ini or you can also try to add these two lines inside .htaccess:
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off php_value magic_quotes_gpc Off
If your modifications in this file have no effects, try to ask your webhosting provider to disable Magic Quotes.
Increase PHP memory limit
A PHP memory limit of 32MB is the minimum requirement for Joomla! and 64MB is recommended for Quickstart installations. Locate the php.ini file used by your web server. Note that this change will affect all CMS websites and PHP scripts on the server. Add or Edit the memory_limit parameter in the php.ini file:
memory_limit = 64M ;
Add the following line to a php.ini file in your Website root folder. If there is no section already for this, place the above line at the end of the file.
In some shared hosting environments, access to the PHP memory limit setting is restricted. If you cannot make the change yourself, please ask your hosting provider to adjust it for you, or look for a new host that allows more flexibility.
Increase Max execution time
This sets the maximum time in seconds a script is allowed to run before it is terminated by the parser. Please check php.ini file and look for “max_execution_time = 60” and change it to 240 or more, up to 600. Then the installation should work perfect. Don't forget to change the value back to the initial setting after you succeeded to install the quickstart package!
