Update to PHP7.2

jyl2016
(@jyl2016)

5 years, 2 months ago

Hi:
As my hosting company require updating PHP to 7.1 in March, I had to to update my wordpress site that’s running in PHP 5.6 still, and I haven’t update my wordpress app for couple years as well.

I updated the wordpress to the most recent version, ran the PHP comparability check, looks like the theme has some error, I downloaded a new theme that’s compatible with PHP 7.1 and changed it.

After I did that, I went to the hosting company’s portal, and changed the PHP version to 7.1. With that change, all the contents on the previous site are gone. With the title and the page name still showing. I tried to go to wordpress dashboard and access those pages to see if I need to redo the content, but it’s showing HTTP Error 500 on all the pages, not loading.

I had to change the php version back to 5.6 and changed it theme back to original where contents were created to get it back up.

Anyone has any idea what I did wrong there?

Thanks

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

Jed
(@jerrald)

5 years, 2 months ago

Bump for this post. I’m also planning to update our site’s php version into PHP 7 soon.

Ronik@UnlimitedWP
(@jdsofttech)

5 years, 2 months ago

Hi @jyl2016,

We provide support for WPSchoolPress here. We can not support you in this case.
Thank you.

JNashHawkins
(@jnashhawkins)

5 years, 2 months ago

I kind of doubt the theme had much to do with the missing content… possibly it did. But it can throw errors that will kill the server or WordPress itself.

I’ve run into a few problems with the earlier 7.x PHP versions but I was thinking 7.2 or 7.3? (maybe) took care of those issues when the host made them available.

If the host will let you continue running on 5.6 then I’d do so until they upgrade again.

Meanwhile, if there’s no chance that theme will be updated anytime soon then maybe it’s time to go ahead and switch themes.

It’s also possible one or more of your plugins actually caused your problems.

Sometimes the upgraded PHP version isn’t ‘tweaked’ properly for your server or might be missing some important package…

I’ve had to leave hosts before when they insisted on doing something that wasn’t conducive with my own purposes.
JNashHawkins
(@jnashhawkins)

5 years, 2 months ago
Further thoughts on your theme if it’s Magazine Basic you were worried about …

That theme supposedly has been tested up to the WordPress version 4.9.9 so I’d expect it to be fine with the 5.X WordPress except it might not like the new Block Editor.

I’d recommend installing the Classic Editor plugin and activating that with your present WordPress then, if you’re not already running WordPress 5.0.3 (or later) you could update the rest of the way.

Do a good complete backup… files and database… don’t trust your host to maintain backups. Then try that PHP 7.x again.

Keep in mind it might be a plugin causing your problems if you have troubles again.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by JNashHawkins.
Thread Starter jyl2016
(@jyl2016)

5 years, 2 months ago

Thanks for all the helpful thoughts. It is the Magazine Basic that I am using now, I read some posts, the PHP comparability check shows most plug in would be compatible with PHP 7.2, with the exception of 1 plug in that’s too large to check and the theme.

I am still using an older version of the theme, tried upgrade it and it did the same thing, losing all contents.

Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)
(@otto42)

WordPress.org Admin

5 years, 2 months ago

500 errors are server errors. If you get them, then you need to check the server error log to find the actual error message, so that you can correct the error.

Thread Starter jyl2016
(@jyl2016)

5 years, 2 months ago

I tried to look for error message on the log, but doesn’t seem to find any. All is shown is wp-admin/themes.php” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36”

I didn’t create the website, so not sure how it was done, it’s showing wordpess is not even installed on the host’s control panel. I tried to access the PHYmyAdmin there, and it’s showing installed, but when I click “go to phpMyAdmin”, it gave me a “404 – File or directory not found.
The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

I was thinking install wordpress again, but doing so will it erase all contents on the existing site?

Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)
(@otto42)

WordPress.org Admin

5 years, 2 months ago

@jyl2016 That looks like an entry in the “access.log”. Look for “error.log”. It’s a separate file.

Do not install WordPress again, especially from cpanel.

Thread Starter jyl2016
(@jyl2016)

5 years, 2 months ago

Hi Guys:

I found out the problem, Thank you for all your help.

I still couldn’t find the error log, even the hosting company not sure what happened, and where to look for the error log. There was a post, said try deactivate plug in one by one to find out the problem, I tried that, and found the google XML map is the cause, once I turned it off, the website returns to normal under PHP 7.2.

Thank you again.