Late last morning, my younger brother left us for a trip over to Vancouver Island to visit his friend Frank, and he was to be staying there for at least two nights.
I fully expected that this trip of his was going to free up far more time for me than it actually has ─ I seem to be meeting with too many unanticipated impediments.
One such has been a problem with the only hosted website I have that is hosted at JustHost. My other five websites are hosted on a single account at HostGator.
I succeeded a few weeks ago in upgrading my HostGator websites from PHP version 5 to 7 (I do not recall the exact decimal placements of the versions) ─ it took me a couple of days to work the entire mess out.
Well, several days ago, I got around to trying to upgrade the JustHost account ─ and I thought that I had, and in only two or so hours.
Then yesterday, I discovered that the website was entirely offline. My WordPress login would not even display because no such website could be found, nor was there any trace of the website by trying to view it as if I was just a visitor ─ there was only a blank page.
So I went to my JustHost cPanel and reverted the PHP back to version 5.6. That brought my website back.
I next tried downloading a plugin called PHP Compatibility Checker and I ran that to see if there were plugins within my website that were incompatible with a PHP version 7 upgrade.
At least four of the plugins were labelled as being incompatible, and several others had warnings that may have been as follows:
1 | WARNING | File has mixed line endings; this may cause incorrect results
Actually a few of the plugins has a couple or more such warnings ─ and one plugin had as many as 55 of them! Yet the plugins were still listed as being compatible with an upgrade to PHP version 7.
I deleted the four or so incompatible plugins, but that didn't help when I again tried a PHP upgrade.
I have the same plugins (that are carrying the warnings) on my HostGator websites, so I don't see why I should have to start deleting more of them on this stupid JustHost account.
And the plugin with the 55 warnings is a shortcode plugin that I bought a number of years ago. If I delete it, then things like every heading and drop cap that I have in the many hundreds of posts will disappear and only be displayed as an ugly line of meaningless text.
It will make all of my posts look sloppy and even less professional than they maybe already do.
But beyond that, what if the deletions don't matter and my website still will not accept a PHP upgrade? I will have lost my plugins for nothing ─ I'm unsure if I can simply download them from one of my HostGator websites and then upload them to the JustHost website once again.
I may have been up last night until after 1:00 a.m., and today I have continued to be vexed trying to figure this out.
Fortunately, I did rise very early and complete the day's content assignment for the new post I have just begun at that website ─ this task always takes three or more hours.
I also managed to take the time for some exercise with my 43½-pound dumbbell. And of course I napped a couple of times ─ I was only in bed around four hours overnight.
I am now glad that I sat through the 40 minutes of sunning I got yesterday afternoon in the backyard, for today has been strictly overcast.
oooooooooooooo
An idea occurred to me concerning the PHP upgrade problem after I wrote the above.
It didn't make much sense to me, but I decided to deactivate WP Shortcode Magic ─ the plugin that inspired 55 warnings from PHP Compatibility Checker.
I upgraded my website to PHP 7...and found the website to again be offline and essentially non-existent.
So I reactivated it, but then systematically began to deactivate each of the other plugins that each had a warning or two, while refreshing the blank website page each time I made a deactivation.
I didn't see why this should make a difference, for whether or not the plugins were active, they were still a part of the website and had all of their components. To my thinking, just having them in the website's database ought to be what counts ─ not whether or not the plugin was functioning.
And then I deactivated the SEO Video Sitemap & Ranking Plugin ─ it was one that had two warnings, even though PHP Compatibility Checker still gave it a "compatible" clearance.
But when I refreshed the empty website page, the website suddenly appeared!
The SEO Video Sitemap & Ranking Plugin had been the problem all along ─ and maybe I never needed to delete those other four or five plugins.
With the website successfully upgraded to PHP 7, I then tried reactivating the plugin, but this message displayed:
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.Fatal error: The file /home4/********/public_html/wp-content/plugins/gvideositemap/sitemap_gen.php was encoded by the ionCube Encoder for PHP 5.0 and cannot run under PHP 7.0. Please ask the provider of the script to provide a version encoded with the ionCube Encoder for PHP 5.6. in Unknown on line 0
Those asterisks are in place of some key information specific to my website that I don't want made public.
These were the pair of warnings that PHP Compatibility Checker had originally come up with concerning the plugin:
FILE: /home4/********/public_html/wp-content/plugins/gvideositemap/sitemap_gen.php-----------------------------------------------------------------------FOUND 0 ERRORS AND 2 WARNINGS AFFECTING 1 LINE-----------------------------------------------------------------------2 | WARNING | Function dl() is deprecated since PHP 5.32 | WARNING | Function dl() is deprecated since PHP 5.3
With all the infernal trouble the SEO Video Sitemap & Ranking Plugin had caused me, I wasn't about to see if there was any way that I could keep it ─ the wretched nuisance had to go.
And so I deleted it.
I'll know in the morning if all remains well with the website, but for now it seems okay.
I had some good news today, though. Upon logging into my chequing account online, I discovered that my income tax refund had been deposited yesterday ─ and it was to the very penny what I had calculated.
I had hiked the income tax return ─ along with my wife's ─ over to the nearby Canada Revenue Agency offices maybe 1¼ miles from here, and dropped them off before it was yet 6:00 a.m. on March 26.
The monthly mortgage is due on the 22nd ─ just six days away. I had thought that the refund would not likely show up until after that important date, but now I have the money in the chequing account to cover that impending debit next week.
Nevertheless, I am not going to take the full hit ─ my two stepsons will be shaken down for some financial assistance.
Anyway, following that earlier blog-break that I took, and before getting back to this blog post, I further extended my break in order for me to hike out to do some shopping at the Cedar Hills shopping centre at 96th Avenue & 128th Street (Google map) about four blocks from here where I live in Surrey.
Note that it has been very lightly raining since before sunset.
I wanted to visit the Shoppers Drug Mart outlet there.
Since suffering what I believe was a bad case of the flu in February, my left ear has been plugged up. In the recent couple or so weeks it has been so severe that my hearing is as reduced as if I was wearing an earplug.
Nothing I do seems able to reopen the Eustachian tube, if that is the trouble.
Once I even lay upon my opposite side on my bed and emptied most of an eyedropper of hydrogen peroxide into the ear, and remained in that position for 15 or more minutes.
It didn't help one whit.
I have read that in some uncommon cases, people have actually permanently lost hearing in an ear due to a flu or cold. Supposedly, there is only a window of about two days whereby it may be possible to have hearing restored if medical attention is sought.
But I am sure my problem is blockage ─ not physical damage to the hearing mechanism.
In fact, after a hot bath a couple of days ago, I succeeded in just briefly regaining full hearing ─ it was almost startling. But the blockage resumed after a few seconds, and I was back where I had been.
What I plan next is to try a solution of tea tree oil perhaps mixed with coconut oil as a carrier oil. Warmed up, a couple of drops into the ear might result in some success. I may even try the tea tree oil straight, if I can find some information online that says doing so is not necessarily any more dangerous than what I did with the hydrogen peroxide.
So I bought the tea tree oil this evening, and also bought some oregano oil. I won't be dumping any of that into my ear, but I have read that massaging it all about the ear can help. And if I am remembering right ─ I will research to be certain ─ it might be safe to soak some cotton with oregano oil and gently place it into the ear.
Caution must be taken not to risk further clogging the ear with any cotton fibres, but I need to see it in print that it is safe to use oregano oil in that fashion ─ I know how powerful that stuff is.
Be sure that I will be reporting on any success I achieve!
I actually bought more than I had really planned, but it was all good. However, during the time I was in the pharmacy, an older woman with a tiny dog had stationed herself in the dark on the sidewalk to panhandle, so I dropped a toonie into her receptacle that was set out for donations.
Had I not bought as much as I did ─ say, just the two essential oils ─ I might have visited a nearby market to see about buying some purple yams or sweet potatoes.
I actually read an article recently about a purple yam from the Philippines that is also known as ube (Dioscorea alata), and which has some excellent properties:
HSIonline.com
I'm unsure if I have ever seen any ube for sale, but I may have in the past.
I keep having to refresh myself as to what is truly a yam and what is actually a sweet potato ─ I find that stores don't identify them any more accurately than do most of us when we talk about them.
I suppose this brief article at NCSweetPotatoes.com is as good as any as that refresher I spoke of: What Is The Difference Between A Sweet Potato And A Yam?
When cooked, the drier tuber is the yam; the one that gets almost sickly sweet and very mushy is the sweet potato.
Anyway, here are some other articles on the ube yam:
- ChowHound.com: Everything You Need to Know About Ube, The Purple Yam
- TheCultureTrip.com: Ube: The Philippine Purple Yam (More Popular Than Vanilla!)
- Mic.com: Everything you need to know about ube — the purple yam that's more than a hipster trend
- HealthyEating.SFGate.com: Nutritional Profile of Ube Yam
I end today's post with another set of photos that were taken on February 25, 2018 (quite likely in the city of Udon Thani) when a niece of my wife got married.
I don't know who the middle of the three women is in all six of these photos, but the tallest woman is my wife, and the second tallest is married to the bride's brother (who of course is my wife's nephew):
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