When you go to your website you get the "Site closed" message and even with your admin account you cannot login. What can you do and why can´t you access your site anymore?


When will you get this message:

You will get the "Site closed" message if you turn your site off. This can be done in system administration under Site Preferences --> General Settings

There are three relevant options there:

1) Turn your site off? yes / no
This is the setting that ultimately decides whether you get the normal site or the "site closed" message.


2) Select groups that are allowed to access while the site is turned off.
Here you can decide which groups can logon while the site is closed. Usually you would have at least webmaster checked so you can still login. However its possible to unselect all groups because under special circumstance you might not even want a member of the webmasters group to be able to login. If you deselect all groups the only way to switch the site on again is by accessing the database directly with phpmyadmin or another database management tool.


3) Reason for turning off the site
You can place any text you like here. It will be displayed on the "site closed" page so you can tell your visitors why the site is currently closed.




How do you regain access if you locked yourself out?:

As i said before you will need access to your database. Use a tool like phpmyadmin to access your database.


1) Find the config table (if your table prefix is xoops it will actually be named xoops_config

e.g. ...
xoops___block_module_link
xoops___config <--- this is the one we are looking for
xoops___configcategory
...

Now just click on that tables name.


2) Locate the "Browse" button and klick that (usually at the top)

Now you will see a list with a lot of Xoops config entries e.g.
...
theme_fromfile
closesite <--- this is the one we are looking for
closesite_okgrp
...

Find the line that has the config option called "closesite". On that line click the "Edit button".
(note that for example phpmyadmin shows by default 30 list entries and you might need to switch to the next page to find what you are looking for)


3) After you pressed edit you will now see all fields belonging to "closesite".

Look for the field "conf_value" and change the value in it to "0". Press "Go" or "Save" and return to your website which should now be open for login again.


4) Remember to change your settings

Go into your Site Preferences --> General Settings to change the groups that are allowed to login when the site is turned off so it won´t bother you again next time.