One of the common and recurring problems that our clients have is when their Joomla website shows a 404 Error on the homepage (and it says something like Article #n not found).
There are many causes for this error, including SEF installation/compatibility issues. However, the most common cause of this error is when the client deletes the Joomla article that is set to be displayed on the homepage by the main menu.
Here’s a scenario of how the problem can happen:
- Article #109 (it can be another article number, we’re just giving an example) is set to be displayed on the homepage in the “Home” Menu Item
- The article is either accidentally or purposely deleted.
- The Joomla engine is confused: it doesn’t know which article to show on the homepage.
- A 404 Error is displayed on the homepage .
Here’s how to fix this problem:
- Login to your Joomla control panel.
- Click on Menus (on the top) and then click on Main Menu.
- Click on “Home” (should be the first entry in the Menu Item list. (You will notice that the URL next to Link no longer exists)
- Choose an article that currently exists by clicking on the Select button next to Select Article under Parameters (Basic)
- Click on Save on the top right.
- Problem is solved.
As we have stated earlier, there might be other reasons for this problem, but this is the most common one. Now if doing the above did not solve your problem, then feel free to contact us, we’re very friendly and we’re eager to help you. Oh, and our fees are extremely reasonable!
Just to say a massive thanks – have been tearing out hair and searching all over Joomla and Google forums for this piece of wisdom – you fixed it in under a minute.
Thanks!
No problem Greg! Glad we were able to help – we try to document every Joomla problem we encounter so that we can benefit our readers!
In my case the home page is fine but from the login to the other articles show a 404 error and following your advice I found that the link is there. Even if I re-select an article it still doesn’t fix the problem.
Found the problem… Switched Friendly URL on in global settings. Just need to configure htaccess file now apparently. ????
I cannot fix my problem. I have a website, that was created by another person. Ok, in this website, under the tab Contactanos (Contact us), on the right side, i have a sub category called celula (where some people i know can sent me a report that I am suppose to receive in my email). When people try to send this report, it says the name of my website followed by 404 not found. I cannot fix this… I cannot receive these reports… I do not know why.. is there any problems with my email setup? why? I will really appreciate your help…
[…] approached us this evening with a problem that is very common on old Joomla versions, the annoying 404 error on the homepage. We thought, that’s odd, this is a very old problem, does it still exist on Joomla 3.0? It […]
I have a problem with this: 404 – Contact not found. I work normally in admin page and everything, but how do I get to see the website what I’m doing if it’s showing this error?
I work in Joomla 1.5.6
Hi Nina,
It seems that you have menu item pointing to a contact that no longer exists (or its status is set to disabled).
Thank you! Since I am a totally newb, and this is my first web page, can you please tell me what to do, where to go? :) I assume that I need to go to Menu Manager and then Edit Menu Items, and then Im lost, I was looking at all options of Home page but I dont know which one is related to this problem..
I solved it! Thank you anyways :)
Thank you! All these forums give me weird answers but this gave me exactly what I needed.
Hi Claudia,
No problem! We pride ourselves in sharing our knowledge about Joomla.
Thank you, this worked for me too. Like someone else said, I was pulling my hair out trying to find help.
My server host gave me a link to this solution, thanks to them too.
Thanks so much, I drove myself mad trying to figure out what went wrong till I found this article. Thanks Again!
Thanks a lot indeed. It helps a lot. Now could you please give me one suggestion to solve another issue with 404 error. I completely uninstalled a component namely (jv-linkexchanger) but still there are many pages comes comes with 404 error and googlebot cannot access my websites. In this case, How can I solve this issue?
Please help me urgently, I have been going mad, I have the Joomla 2.5. I had everything set up and then it said article not found error 404. I then deleted everything and am trying to start from scratch but I’m still getting an “error item not found” and server error 404. Please can someone help me with a step to step response as this is my first time .
Thank you will really appreciate it.
Hi Jacqueline,
Are you sure that your homepage is not pointing to an article that no longer exists? It might be that you have mistakenly unpublished the homepage article and that’s the cause of the problem.
Many thanks – it was indeed a deleted article that created the problem (strangely, Chrome did not get affected by this).
Had me googling for hours until I came upon this piece of wisdom. Such a simple fix, yet troubled me for so long.
Thanks a lot