Yesterday ended for me into the midnight hour when I had my bedtime after sitting up and operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box for the benefit of my younger brother and myself.
Yet despite falling asleep in due course, I found myself not only sleeping in short stretches, but I was also feeling oddly unwell.
Somewhere around 3:00 a.m. I rose only to turn on and log into my computer ─ and then disconnecting my mouse ─ to give it a half-hour or so to load and warm up. This is a measure I take to best avoid running the risk of my computer freezing ─ which it seems to do if I start it up after I have it turned off for any length of time and it has then become cold.
I returned to bed, and once again managed to lapse into another nap ─ which is all I feel I am doing with these short bouts of sleep.
It wasn't yet quite 5:00 a.m. when I rose to use my computer. And today, I would not be performing any website post work. Today, I had a considerably more challenging task before me.
I have five of my six hosted websites on a single HostGator account, and maybe three weeks ago I learned that all five of the websites were running on versions of PHP 5.0 ─ whereas HostGator can actually provide up to versions 7.1.
However, for some reason, HostGator does not automatically perform this service, and most website owners probably are unaware that their websites are not as current with PHP as they should be ─ for security and probably other reasons.
I realized that it was possible to perform my own upgrade, but there was always the chance that my websites would 'break,' and therefore backups should be performed first.
I have never backed up my five HostGator websites. I did try when I learned about all of this those three or so weeks ago, but the backup failed using a plugin called UpDraftPlus.
The plugin allows website backup files to be sent to services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Rackspace, Onedrive, SFTP, Azure, WebDAV, and more ─ hardly any of which I have ever heard of, let alone have any storage accounts at.
Google Drive was the exception ─ I do have a free account there.
But I was to discover that I needed more than the free space I was being allowed ─ my websites' backups were a little too large to be accommodated.
I am so damned and hopelessly deep into debt, my retirement pension just cannot afford yet one further monthly bleed that would occur if I undertook a paid data storage account with Google Drive or any of the other more obscure services.
So I held off doing anything further until I had finally finished and published a new post I had begun at one of those websites. I finally published that post yesterday, as I recorded in that day's post here.
This morning, I began the research to see if I could achieve a somewhat sneaky shortcut to achieve those backups that didn't require renting more space at something like Google Drive.
It took hours, but I did succeed. What I did was use the UpDraftPlus plugin to backup my websites in sections. I had seen that the backups involved four main packages: "Plugins"; "Themes"; "Uploads"; and one simply called "Others".
The first two were together far smaller in megabyte size than either of the latter two, which were both veritable giants.
So I ran the backup first by just selecting the first two types of files together. When they were all downloaded to Google Drive, I then saved them to my computer Desktop and then deleted them from Google Drive.
Then I successively proceeded downloading each of the other two file types, but they both took a long time ─ sometimes I wasn't even sure the process hadn't stalled.
But ultimately, it all seemed to work, and I got the job done.
By then it was into the afternoon. I had been watching T.V. via our Android TV Box with my younger brother from 10:00 a.m. until into the noon-hour, when he took his leave to return to his bedroom to rest up before disappearing for the afternoon as he always does.
And then I bit the ol' bullet and accessed my HostGator cPanel and undertook the process of upgrading to PHP version 7.1. using their PHP Configuration Plugin.
There were two 7.1 versions available ─ one was identified as PHP Edge (7.1).
Well, I wasn't interested in monkeying around with anything that had a fancy or specialist moniker, so the plan was to leave that one alone and just go for the generic 7.1 version.
I hit the "Update" button, and in a flash the change apparently took place. Was that all there was to it, I wondered?
So I went to the main website of the domain where the other four websites are addons, and I tried logging in.
To my utter chagrin, I was presented with a blank webpage with a warning that a part of a plugin identified as gvideositemap could not be upgraded from its version of PHP 5.0 to version 7.1
And meantime, I was unable to access my website's WordPress Dashboard. Basically, I was locked out; and for all I knew, my website was offline.
So once again, I had to begin researching.
Most fortunately, I was able to find a website discussing a variation of the very warning I had received ─ their version of the warning was this: The file /path/to/file.php was encoded by the ionCube Encoder for PHP 5.6 and cannot run under PHP 7.1 or later. Please ask the provider of the script to provide a version encoded with the ionCube Encoder for PHP 7.1.
I had no idea who the original "vendor/author" of the plugin was. And when I used FileZilla to access the plugin in my website's HostGator database, there was nothing I could find that could be a "copyright notice"
What I finally had to do was make a decision after learning in my research that the gvideo plugin related to Google Video, a service that no longer exists.
So I used FileZilla to simply delete the entire plugin.
Then I refreshed my website's wordpress login page...and another warning appeared indicating a problem with some line of another plugin being referred to as "gaa" ─ I think that basically it may have said that the line's PHP version was incompatible with version 7.1.
So what the heck was a "gaa" plugin?
Well, it turned out to be one that I must have once bought some years back called Google Adsense Accelerator.
If it ever did me any good, I have never noticed. I do not often earn even as much as 10¢ in AdSense revenue in an entire month ─ despite having had an AdSense account for over a decade.
So I hardly struggled with the decision to try deleting this plugin, too.
Once that was done, I again refreshed the website's WordPress login page ─ and all was well! In fact, I even noticed this statement in the dashboard: "Running PHP version: 7.1.14."
Hallelujah!
I still haven't attempted to log into my four other HostGator websites, however. Maybe I will do that right now.
oooooooooooooo
As it turned out, only the main domain had updated to version 7.1, so I went ahead and updated all of the others ─ and I had to delete those same two plugins.
However, one of the websites did not have either of the two plugins, and I cannot access the WordPress dashboard.
I only see this on an otherwise blank white page:
Sorry, this page doesn't exist.
Please check the URL or go back a page.404 Error. Page Not Found.
So I feel temporarily screwed. I can see no alternative but to contact HostGator and see if they can resolve the problem.
oooooooooooooo
I took a break before contacting HostGator ─ I have spent too many hours today mucking about with website backups and PHP upgrades.
I had a little exercise, and then shaved and had myself a bath.
When I returned to give the website login another shot, this time it worked!
However, my day is also shot. It is now after 7:00 p.m., and I blogged about practically nothing that I had intended to.
I even wasted a sunny afternoon when I could have sat out in the backyard and basked in the warm sunshine. Happily, the next few days are supposed to also be sunny, so I shall endeavour not to squander any such opportunity for the foreseeable future hereafter.
Since I have but two final photos remaining from a small reunion in Bali that my wife and her two sons arranged early last year with five of their Thailand family members, I will close this post with the pair of images.
As near as I can tell, the two photos must have been taken at an airport as my wife and her family were waiting for their flight from Indonesia to take them back to Bangkok ─ I suspect that both photos were taken on the evening of February 2, 2018:
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