Joomla 3.0 – Fix Application Instantiation Error

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Everything went smoothly as usual in my local machine, but as soon as I moved the website to the client server, it wouldn’t run normally, instead it gives me the dreaded error message:

Error displaying the error page: Application Instantiation Error

After a small search on Google, I found that all people were saying to check that the database connection credentials were correct in configuration.php, in fact, I’m not new to this thing but I checked again…

public $host = 'localhost';
public $user = 'me';
public $password = 'P0L1C3';
public $db = 'my_db';

To my big surprise, the error was with the server not having the mysqli extension, this is rather inconvenient in 2013, and to add insult to irony, magic quotes were turned on, anyways, I got things to work “normally” after changing the $dbtype from mysqli to mysql:

public $dbtype = 'mysql';

Sad but true…

## PS.
If –like me– you were migrating a website, don’t forget to change the $log_path and $tmp_path near the end of the configuration file.

9 thoughts on “Joomla 3.0 – Fix Application Instantiation Error”

  2. SaranyaMareeswatan

    I had run through the error : Error displaying the error page: Application Instantiation Error. I had changed my configuration.php to the right database as provided in the hosting account as follows. As you had suggested to change public $dbtype='mysqli' to public $dbtype='mysql', the site opens up with the same error. Could you assist me in processing the same error.

    public $dbtype = 'mysql';
public $host = 'localhost';
public $user = 'gavick';
public $password = 'Nakshatra@2008';
public $db = 'gavick';
    Reply
    1. Nabil

      The php mysql extension is deprecated, you should use mysqli unless you have no choice (like me in the situation I wrote about).

      Are you sure you didn’t make errors in the database details, with most hosts, $user and $db would ressemble to this…

      public $user = 'cpuser_user';
public $db = 'cpuser_db';

      … where cpuser is your CPanel account username.

      Reply
  3. Saranya

    I had configured mySQL database in godaddy hosting account with the following details.
    User name : gavick, database name : gavick (as username and database names are same), password : Nakshatra@2008. Opened phpMyadmin, imported the data into gavick database. I had configured with these details in Configuration.php. Should we need to make any other changes in Configration.php to make it work.

    Reply
  4. NAEEM ISHAQ

    I developed site in joomla 3 and getting the same above discussed error, before using 2.5 or later not such error. I have checked its db, user and pass all ok, also changed mysql, but did not work. Please guide me what to do. Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Nabil

      Check that PHP5 is loading mysqli using the command :

      php -m

      Then verify that Joomla is configured with mysqli (see the post).

      Reply

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