web developers / php experts please help!

hi all

myself and another chap run a small sports coaching business (barely not-for-profit ) on the side.
we use a website that auto-generates and emails out workout programs to peeps. however our web hosting upgraded their php versions and its broken our site so we cant modify anything:



do we have any options for updating it/fixing our login?

cheers in advance if anyone has solutions!

Your problem is you can't login in order to fix it? Do you have direct access to the server (by SSH) or is that managed and you just login through the web portal to administrate the website?

Contact your web host if it's the latter, they broke it so they should help fix it.

If it's a shared (virtual host) then they should be able to modify the configuration for your virtual host to use the previous PHP version although they may argue it's a security risk. Myself I could select about 15 different versions of PHP or that might have been because the instance was originally created ages ago.

If not you could consider moving to a host that supports that all without getting a developer involved.

Otherwise yes you need to edit those lines (bear in mind the lines reported by PHP don't always add up to the lines in your text editor) because it's trying to update the headers twice in one loop. You can ignore the first error this is just a warning.

Provided the older versions of PHP are stall installed on the server you might be able to force this with a local Apache config file (.htaccess) uploaded to root of your web space via FTP as that can override however they have Apache configured globally.

to answer both questions:

we login via a webportal - no direct access as far as im aware
PHP version is old so web hosters wont support it (security risk)

Someone with server access (even if just uploading new files via FTP) needs to fix those lines. If you can't do it, they need to do it. If they won't do it, I think it's find another host I'm afraid.

Looks to me like you're going to have to recode your database connections and sql commands to mysqli instead of mysql. Do you have the original PHP files to edit?

It's only saying depreciated but it'll still parse - that error would dissapear if error reporting is turned off or only enabled for errors (and not warning).

The other problem needs to be fixed by a developer unfortunately. The server admins will argue and they may be correct (although it is more to them to make sure all are black boxed from each other so one compromised PHP site can't affect any others on the server and they're maybe not doing that) that it's a security risk because of exploits that have wound up in people's code based on the old language version.

I think in this case the ToCs are definitely going to exclude liability for losses or damages or anything like that including their ability to jump in and fix bugs for you, I just don't see them doing that so unfortunately you're probably going to need to get in touch with a developer and get those things fixed. Unfortunately things like this tend to show up without the best practices in the first place limiting them but that said, I've seen sites completely flip with PHP updates whereas something with a very carefully curated code base like Wordpress will be fine on several versions, it really depends on exactly how it's been coded and you never really know unfortunately. It's something you need to be prepared for if you have a bespoke site that isn't regularly updated by some repository so open source etc and some developers are a bit gooseberry fool about just leaving you in the muck if their code isn't supported anymore later down the line in situations like this.

Ideally you need a retainer or a maintenance contract with the developer who built the site, this needs to be an overhead costed into your business even if it's non-profit, can you get in touch with them at all? It might only take 30 minutes so even on developer rates that's about £35-50 quid, what are you losing in the meantime?

If by web portal you mean something like Cpanel or Parallels server or some bespoke thing you can probably find a file browser and editor and from there it's possible to edit files including PHP ones but I'd consider that a last ditch scenario unless you know what you're doing and know PHP (but even if you know PHP that doesn't mean you know how this site was structured in the fundamental sense and so "fixing" one thing might completely breaks something else and before you know it you're rebuilding your entire site). If you are running a live service you definitely want a developer on hand.

If you are out of a limb I would suggest posting a gig on something like Upwork explaining the problem and asking for a code review and fixing those bugs, hopefully the code is commented and easier enough to follow for an experience developer but it might take some time to diagnose the problem. If it's a regularly used platform or code environment like Lavarel or CodeIgnitor for example (and it probably is) then it might be a quick fix because it's using pretty good best practices and established conventions for this sort of thing (something PHP greatly benefits from because it' seen around for decades) rather than some lone wolf wildcard weirdo who codes gooseberry fool that makes no sense to anyone else or codes the same gooseberry fool 3 different times in multiple places, then you have problems and whoever you hire will kick you for this and up their costs.