Joomla is a great way to create websites. It comes as free and requires zero expertise in coding too.

But, often due to bad configuration, Joomla reports error in the website. One such error is Joomla error 1054.

Usually, Joomla shows error 1054 when updating from older versions. And, often it makes Joomla backend unavailable.

That’s why, we often get requests from customers to fix Joomla errors as part of our Technical Support Services.

Today, we’ll see the details of error 1054 and how Bobcares’ Engineers fix it.

When, What and Why of Joomla error 1054 ?

Before proceeding further, we’ll see further details of error.

Usually, the 1054 error happens when upgrading Joomla to latest version from older version.

Recently, one of our customers reported this problem when doing an upgrade from 3.7.5 to 3.8. Unfortunately, the immediate effect is that Joomla back-end becomes inaccessible.  And, it reports variation of the error as:

Error 1054 Unknown column 'a.client_id' in 'where clause.'

Surprisingly, the Joomla frontend will work fine. Therefore, it affects customers only while make changes in the Joomla backend. When accessing the Joomla administrator panel, you do not see the usual control panel. Instead, it will show up as completely blank screen.

But, what causes the error?

Here, by this error, Joomla complains about missing columns in Joomla database. Just as site building tools like WordPress, Joomla also stores site configuration in Databases. And, error 1054 means problem with sites Joomla database.

How we fix error 1054 in Joomla?

Ok. The reason for error is screwed up database. Therefore, to make Joomla backend panel working again, we need to fix the database.

Again, fixing database errors need utmost care. We’ll now see how our Dedicated Engineers fix it for the customers.

1. From Joomla Admin panel

When Joomla admin panel is accessible, the error 1054 can be fixed from the panel itself.

For this, we follow the steps as listed below.

We select Extensions → Manage → Database from the drop-down menu of the Joomla! Administrator Panel. It will show errors with the Database. To fix them, our Support Engineers Click on the Fix button.
After a few seconds, it will show the “Database table structure is up to date” message:

That fixes the 1054 Unknown Column ‘client_id’ in ‘field list’ error and admin panel becomes accessible again.

2. From PHPMyAdmin

Unfortunately, in certain cases, Joomla admin panel just shows a blank page. In such cases, PHPMyAdmin helps in fixing database inconsistencies easily.  Luckily, running an SQL query in the database can solve the Joomla error.

That’s why, our Dedicated Engineers connect to the websites’ control panel and then to PHPMyAdmin.

We run the following SQL query commands to alter the database table.

ALTER TABLE `xxx_menu_types` ADD COLUMN `client_id` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;

UPDATE `xxx_menu` SET `published` = 1 WHERE `menutype` = 'main' OR `menutype` = 'menu';

Here, we substitute ‘xxx’ with the prefix of website’s database tables:

After running this query, the Joomla panel becomes accessible again.

Conclusion

In short, Joomla error 1054 happens due to inconsistencies with website’s database. Today, we saw the details of the error and how our Dedicated Engineers fix it and make Joomla backend working again.