Warning Error – creating default object from empty value

My web host is forcing me to switch to PHP 5.4. I was on 5.3 and they won’t force the switch until next April so plenty of time. Well I switched anyway (although I can go back). An got a problem.

I use the Pagelines Platform theme and two of it’s PHP files are throwing errors and lots of them. I detail two below.

The first one throws the error on this line (there are quite a few like this):
$this->hidden->text = '';

The error is: Warning: Creating default object from empty value in /wp-content/themes/platform/includes/class.layout.php on line 167

So I found a way to fix it by adding this if statement before the lines like:

if (!is_object($this->hidden)) {
					$this->hidden = new stdClass;
				}
$this->hidden->text = '';

Now that works and resolved all lines like that. Then I got this type of line with the same warning:

$this->dcol[ $number_of_columns ]->container_width = $this->content->width + $column_gutter - $round_amount;

I tried adding the if statement as above but got an error about an array not being stdClass. This is where my talents runs out and I don’t know how to create the if statement to stop it warning about these lines. So, I commented the lines out and tested my site. It still works, as expected on every single page.

I suppose some people would call that a fix, but I am nervous that this will come back and bite me if i do something new or different on the site in the future, so ideally I want to fix it.

I’m on a shared 1&1 so can’t get at php.ini to stop warnings showing, and I’ve tried varying ideas with custom php.ini files in sub folders and mods to .htaccess – all with no luck.

Any help on the sytax around the if statement for the array would be really helpful.

Thanks

David