Why Greg hates the forum

[Drunk Monk]

We're u telling me the same thing about kfm last Monday? Our crash was due to our provider.
What happened with yours?

[Greg]

My provider.

[Drunk Monk]

Who is your provider?

[Greg]

I've been with iPower for going on 13 years nows. It seems every once in a while they play with the servers.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Ach! I've finally seen *spam* on the forum! This is a first for me. I don't know what to think! Is it a sign? If so, what of? If not, why not? IT IS ALL SO CONFUSING!!!

[Greg]

I usually get rid of it faster. There has been plenty of spam over the years. I'm sorry for your loss. Of innocence.

[Greg]

Turns out it is prudent to keep an eye on those notices from iPower about renewing your domain name.

[Drunk Monk]

Mercury in retrograde.  It's real I tell ya.

---

Dammit.  It's still weirdly hinkey on my iPhone.  

[Greg]

I guess it was time to break the forum hard. Although, i sort of have it working.

It all stems from screw ups on the WestCoastFencing Archive site. Not screw ups per se, but they said my PHP was outdated. It all went tits up from there.

[King Bob]

I had the same problem on my work site when they updated the PHP version. I had to walk through a ton of code to fix it. You solved it way faster than I did!

[Greg]

I just reset it. I did have to pay to get the database back since I erased it during the upgrade process. I still have to update the forum. It's many generations behind.

[Drunk Monk]

Thanks for your continued efforts. The forum has been good medicine for me lately.

[Greg]

I need a website for Stro. This is also means I need to update WP across all websites so I can get the latest version for the Stro website. To get the latest version of WP, I need to upgrade to at least version 5.6 of PHP which is a server language that drives data driven websites.

Now, every time I have updated to version 5.6 of PHP, the WestCoastFencingArchive (WCFA) crashed. So, I called my web hosting company and asked them if they could tell why that happened. I was online with tech support in India for about minute when they said it was working fine. Great. I checked it out and sure enough it was working.

I logged into the Admin at WCFA and upgraded Wordpress to 5.4. Yes, the numbers get confusing. Wordpress is on version 5.4 while PHP has a variety of flavors 5.6 in the 5.x series but they also have better version in a 7.x series.

I upgraded all the plug-ins as well. I went back to the site on the front end and WCFA was all screwed up. It was centered in the page like I was looking at a mobile phone. I viewed in on chrome and got a 'critical error' message and no website.

I tried to switch back to php 5.5, the previous version of php, but I received a message saying my version of Wordpress would no longer work with version 5.5 of php. Stuck.

I got back on with tech support. They did things behind the scenes. The website would work in what's called debug mode in php 5.6 but you got a giant error message across the top of the screen. Once you left debug mode, the website crashed.

The tech then put the server into an even later version of php 7.3. The website worked great in both Safari and Chrome. Only one little hiccup. The Doom forum crashed.

I've known for quite some time that I need to upgrade the version of forum. But it keeps messing up when I try so I've moved onto other things. I'm currently about 8 incremental versions behind, versions that can run in 7.3.

But I can't make the changes in the forum 7.3. I need to be in version 5.6

So, the Sophie's Choice is run php 5.6 so I can see the Doom Forum and have WCFA be screwed up. Or run php 7.3 and have the WCFA website up while I wait for tech support to find a fix to run it in php 5.6

WCFA or Doom Forum.

You can all no doubt guess my choice. Granted, I am working on the fix now on Sunday night at 7:56 pm.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

You have chosen...wisely.

[Drunk Monk]

DOOM has better sword fights than WCFA.  

One of many reasons why DOOM must survive.  

Thanks again Greg, for all the work you do here.  DOOM is keeping me sane during these unstable times.