Journal
Well that was... fun.
Feb 18, 2021
A few days ago, I popped over here to write about how I'd accidentally found myself in three separate state QSO parties and how fun it was. (Link to follow.) But when I got there, the site didn't load. Odd.
Troubleshooting, editing, commenting out what I thought might do it, nothing fixed it. As a wild guess I switched the site theme and... tahdah, it worked.
Well poop.
So then I went to write about that and... the blog post manager didn't work.
Double-poop.
No troubleshooting gave me any idea what could have caused the issue. So given that the CMS engine I use is relatively old (mostly cause it's so simple, it doesn't require frequent updates), I presumed that the software was broken and it was time to switch CMS engines.
I spent an entire morning testing, trying, executing, uploading, copying, pasting, editing, etc. Nothing gave me the results I love from this CMS - simple, clean, uncluttered, intuitive, easy.
I decided that if the CMS was broken, I'd just hack into it and make it work for me again. Kind of like when you hold something together on your car with rubber bands and duct tape. As long as it works fine and looks the same, who cares.
A quick enable of the debug mode showed all sorts of whacky stuff. Researching the errors, aka copy-pasting them verbatim in a Google search, I got my first clue. "Older PHP versions were okay with this, but newer ones are more picky."
Hrm...
So I log into my host's admin panel (which is notoriously hard to find and NOT intuitive at all) and check the PHP version. Tahdur, they had recently auto-upgraded me with no notification. I selected the prior PHP version, reloaded the site, and tah-dah, it worked perfectly.
My strong dislike for my hosting company has increased significantly.