Hi Beat ... thanks for your response.
I spent a few hours double-checking the file system and the database tables and records. Everything seems to be fine ... no missing files or incomplete db records.
I did get lead from the folks at Joomla Pack regarding the administrator "DB function failed with error number 1054" error. The issue is with the different way MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 parses joins, if there are no brackets present.
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Here is a link from MySQL's website describing this issue:
bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=13551
Description:
LEFT JOIN gives the "#1054 - Unknown column 'xxxx' in 'on clause'" error on MySQL 5, but
it's working fine in MySQL 4.1
Explanation:
This is a change that was made in 5.0.15 to make MySQL more compliant with the standard.
Thus when you write
... FROM t1 , t2 LEFT JOIN t3 ON (expr)
it is parsed as
(1) ... FROM t1 , (t2 LEFT JOIN t3 ON (expr))
and not as
(2) ... FROM (t1 , t2) LEFT JOIN t3 ON (expr)
so, from expr you can only refer to columns of t2 and t3 - operands of the join.
Workaround - to put parentheses explicitly as in (2). Then you can refer to t1 columns
from expr.
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Note they only refer to version 5.0.15 ... my host is using 5.0.67 .... I don't know if this issue was solved by this version. The above is beyond my very basic SQL knowledge, so I'm not even sure if this is relevant ...
On a positive note, when I access individual CB profiles, all info. is coming up fine, including the blog, picture gallery, and visitor book plug-ins. I also created a Member List which is also "nonexistant", but I assume this is related to the above "user management" issue.
FYI ... I did solve the frontend login issue by reverting to the standard Joomla login. It works okay.