If logging in to your offline Joomla website as Registered users and you encounter the log-in error: “cannot access the private section of this site”, you may try the following fixes:

Set the correct global permissions to allow the user (Registered) group to login to the offline site.

  1. Login to backend
  2. Go to Global Configuration > Permissions
  3. Click to edit “Registered” (or any other user groups that requires logging in to the offline website)
  4. Set “Offline Access” to “Allowed”

Joomla registered users not allowed to login to offline Joomla 3.4.x website; cannot access the private section of this site

Fix the assets table of the Joomla database

  1. Go to your database thru any of database management tools and interface, for example PHPMyAdmin
  2. Navigate to your database
  3. Create a backup, so you can reload if something does go well
  4. Run the following SQL queries, one after the other (below SQL querying is for Joomla 3.x)
    • UPDATE `#_assets` SET `parent_id`=1 WHERE `parent_id` = ‘0’;
    • UPDATE `#_assets` SET `parent_id`=0 WHERE `title` = ‘Root Asset’;
  5. This will fix any broken assets values when and where found

Update Joomla assets table

Fix Joomla assets table

Rebuild your Menus and Categories

  1. Go to your menus and any categories of your existing components where applicable (Articles, K2, etc.)
  2. Select all categories, then click the Rebuild button to refresh and attempt to fix relevant values
  3. Additionally, try deleting all Trashed Items and Categories

Rebuild Joomla Menus and Categories