Set Joomla Session Handler To PHP instead of Database - Joomla 🛠Maintenance Monday Live Stream
In this issue of Maintenance Monday, we look at setting the #Joomla Session Handler to #PHP instead of #Database - if your server is set up to handle that. SUBSCRIBE TODAY! ► https://goo.gl/N6y5bH
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Hey there, Joomla fans. Tim Davis here.
Today we're going to look at what to set the Session Handler to on our Joomla sites.
We're just down here at the bottom of the screen in the Configuration File. Now to get there we go to System, Global Configuration, and then click on the System tab. You might see Site for tab first, but click on System.
So basically, the Session is information that is set when you log in saying, "Hey Tim is logged in to the site, and so we will talk to Tim's computer." And in layman's terms there's a permission set and connections. Then once that Session is set you have in this case, 15 minutes to be doing something on the site: saving it or closing a window or calls to the server, and each time you do something the Session is reset. If you leave - in this case the way this site is set - after 15 minutes and do nothing, then the Session expires, so that if someone came walking along they won’t be able to get on your computer; unfortunately, that also includes you.
There are two options right now in a Joomla 3.7.5 site of where to store the Session information.
Probably by default when you set up your Joomla site it is set to Database. So, the information that records that your visit is active is stored right in your Joomla database, and that works great. But if your server or your web host is set up for it if you switch from Database to PHP then your Session information is stored in a file right on the server. That's always faster.
Now the reason I haven't saved this yet is because if your web host is not set up to handle Sessions through the PHP method or through a file method then if you save this you might get locked out of your Joomla site. So don't try this unless you're sure that you can go into your control panel for your web hosting to go and edit this right in the file. Now, before I save this, we'll just look how to do that.
Here's the file manager for this web hosting account and basically what I've already done in the file manager in this Control Panel, is clicked on file manager and then in the root folder that Joomla is installed you want to find the configuration.PHP file. Then when you find that you will edit it.
I'm not going to open this right now but I will show you this. If you save your configuration file after switching to PHP for your Session Handler and your site doesn't work go into the file space, go into configuration.PHP, find the line in your configuration.PHP that says "public session_handler" and you will see that once you switch to PHP the handler equals "none." So, when you see public session _ handler = "none" if you want to switch back, switch that to "Database" and then save your file in your file manager and then your Joomla site will come back online.
One another thing. Remember back up your site. I've got a tutorial on how to do that. Backup your site regularly because as you're tinkering around with this stuff something can happen at any time; you never know.
Alright, so now we're logged in to the backend of the site here still, Session Handler was at Database, it switched to PHP, now I'm going to save it and what's going to happen is this. When I save it, I'm going to get kicked out of the back end of the site and that's why we wanted to make sure that you have access to the file manager on your web hosting because if I had not been kicked out here it had just gone black then I would have been in a bad way. But basically, when you switch the method to where your sessions are stored, you have to create a new session - you're logged out.
So I can log into here and that will take us back into the site and we can go System, Global Configuration, and just for maintaining or perhaps even it's more just setting up our site here we now have changed Session Handler from Database to PHP which is the "none" method, and there it is and it stuck.
So that's just something that you can do to give yourself a little bit of boost of performance in your Joomla site and a good way to set it up if your web hosting is set up for that.
And so we will just wrap that up before we head to the chat to see if anybody is online with any questions. So with that completed - that part completed, once again as always, enjoy your Joomla sites and God bless you. #joomla
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