So now and then, you will notice strange error messages on your Joomla!^TM site. These messages tell you something about PHP Notice or PHP Warning or even PHP Error. So what do these messages mean? And how to get rid of them?

PHP syntax

Joomla! is writting with the programming language PHP, and within PHP there is a thing called syntax that tells programmers how to write their code. If the syntax is not followed correctly, this might prevent PHP from running correctly. Sometimes things might go horribly wrong - in that case the PHP-application just does not work. Other times everything still works fine, but the PHP-code is just not written in a clean way.

PHP-code should be written in a certain way, and these PHP messages should help programmers to fix problems if they arise.

PHP Notices

Notices are not warnings or errors. When a PHP Notice occurs, it just tells that some PHP-code could be written in a better way. Nothing is wrong, remember that. The code could just be optimized a bit better. If you're social person, it might be an idea to send the PHP-programmer a message telling him that you found this PHP Notice. But this is just a suggestion, it's not a requirement.

PHP Warnings and PHP Errors

However, if a PHP Warning or PHP Error occurs, the situation is more serious. With a PHP Error occur, the PHP-script will stop right away and you will have a problem. But with a PHP Warning, there is no error yet, but the PHP-engine thinks there might be one soon. In both cases, it's best to contact the PHP-programmer and let him know something is wrong.

But I'm not a programmer?

But if you're not a programmer, these messages are in most cases not that interesting. If general, if everything just works fine as it should - forget about the message and keep using your software. Perhaps you could contact the programmer that made the software, but as you are unable to fix it, it's perhaps better to get rid of the messages.

Hide the messages in Joomla!

Instead of upgrading the PHP-code (which requires help from the PHP-programmer) you can just configure Joomla! to not show these messages. This is highly recommended if your Joomla! site is live on the Internet, because PHP-messages might also give valuable information to hackers.

To disable the messages in Joomla!, browse to the Global Configuration and the tab Server. Set the option Error Reporting to something like Simple or None.

Blank screen

Note that with the value None you will have no indication from PHP that something goes wrong. If a PHP Error occurs, the webpage will just come up blank. In that case, either turn on Error Reporting again, or better: Find out in your Apache ErrorLog files what went wrong.