Any way to switch themes for disabled site?

[LiquidFractal]

So the last two recent updates have, for me, required an updated custom theme.  The problem is that it cripples my site completely every time this happens - homepage is screwed and I can't log in to my adminCP - the login page only shows EX0 Something went wrong. Please try again.

This is extremely irritating and I really wish there were a safeguard of some kind to revert to the default theme so that admins can log in and upload updated custom themes.  Don't know if this is possible, but in the meantime is there a way I can FTP to my site and tweak some details to at least switch the theme that way?

[opentype]

Yes, you can activate the Recovery Mode for such issues via FTP.

 

[Matt]

Opentype beat me to it.

We have a guide on recovery mode: 

 

[Marc]

Matt and Opentype beat me to it. Damn!

 

[Randy Calvert]

4th!!

[LiquidFractal]

All good....thanks to @opentype and to everyone else who would have replied with the same as well!

[LiquidFractal]

Ok, I might have spoken a bit too soon.  I created a constants.php and inserted the following:

<?php
define( 'RECOVERY_MODE' , TRUE);

As per the example...actually there were a couple of variant examples on this page:

but this was the one which correctly coloured the arguments, which I presume means it's correct.

Either way, this line has no effect - I still can't sign in.  And I tried including and excluding the end tag for PHP, but it didn't make a difference.  Am I missing something?

[LiquidFractal]

PS permissions for the file are also set to 777 for good measure.  Tried using quotes for both values, or just one as per one of the examples - no change.

[Marc]

Please update the access details on file, and we can take a look for you to see what is going on there

[LiquidFractal]

6 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Please update the access details on file, and we can take a look for you to see what is going on there

Thanks Marc.  However, the details on file are for my production site, and this is for my test install (which there's no room to include).  My test install is also in a subdirectory - does that change anything?  I assume not but thought I'd mention it.

Edited April 19, 2022 by LiquidFractal

[Marc]

We wouldnt usually assist with test instances, but if you add ftp details for test instead of live, and also ensure login details are for your test, I will take a quick look to see if I can see whats going on

[LiquidFractal]

12 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

We wouldnt usually assist with test instances, but if you add ftp details for test instead of live, and also ensure login details are for your test, I will take a quick look to see if I can see whats going on

Thanks Marc - I've added the relevant information into the Notes box in my access details in the Client Area.

[Marc]

I dont have the login details to get in there, but you should be able to log into the admin CP and disable things now

[LiquidFractal]

10 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

I dont have the login details to get in there, but you should be able to log into the admin CP and disable things now

Marc, thank you for fixing the problem!  Any insights as to why Recovery Mode wasn't working?

[Marc]

Recovery mode is something that disables everything. However your issue was caching there, which is not something it would have accounted for. In this instance, I cleared out the datastore folder manually, which is what brought back the ACP login page.

[LiquidFractal]

21 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

In this instance, I cleared out the datastore folder manually, which is what brought back the ACP login page.

Thanks Marc.  In the future, is the datastore folder something like a Windows Temp folder which can be cleared out whenever?  In other words, is that basically the cache folder?

[Marc]

Its essentially caching data, yes. So you can clear out that folder in an effort to resolve issues if needed. In fact this is one of the things that "clear cache" in the support area of your admin CP does. You would clear everything other than the index.html file in there.