My wife showed up late Sunday afternoon or very early that evening, and has been home ever since (as I type these words at 9:29 a.m. while she is still in bed; however, I have a strong hunch that she will have to go to work late this morning).
With her home all day yesterday, I had no opportunity to blog nor even to exercise, apart from a set of 176 of my version of Hindu squats.
Nevertheless, I have been productive online.
I rose in the weest a.m. yesterday ─ perhaps even in the midnight hour, for I had gone to bed around 9 p.m. Now, I barely achieved any sleep after retiring so early, but I rose regardless. I have learned that I do not necessarily have to await the nightly retirement of my drunken younger brother ─ I only need to have my wife come to bed.
She typically spends long periods of time here at my computer when she is home, and in the evenings will pull the door almost closed. As a result, I now realize that my brother ─ when I rise once she has come to bed, and I surreptitiously come into this room and similarly pull the door nearly closed ─ undoubtedly thinks that it is she who is in the room, for I doubt he is keeping himself privy to her activities as he sits by himself in the darkened living room watching T.V. and swilling beer.
I cannot pull the same trick when my wife is not home, of course. But it does free up time I have not previously been making available to myself when she is here. The trick is to occupy the room soon after she has retired for the night.
Anyway, after rising, instead of finalizing the post I have worked for well over a month upon and getting it published, I decided to try and upgrade the PHP version of the five websites that I have on one account at HostGator. I believe the account is termed a "baby" account. I have an original website that was created on the account a decade ago, plus four add-ons that I have added since thereafter.
I had checked the PHP version months ago, and HostGator wasn't offering the very latest version of PHP, but at least I was able to increase what I had to version 7.1.
Note that I previously had to research and figure out how to change my websites from the "HTTP" protocol to "HTTPS", and that involved joining Cloudflare and getting a free SSL certificate. I think that the entire process was the most complex undertaking I have ever been involved with.
I had actually intensively researched that conversion months before that, but ultimately dared not to take the first step because the complexity was more than I had the fortitude to take on.
When finally I did tackle it, the project was one I had to contend with on my own. At the time, HostGator was not offering free SSL certification, so they were useless.
And now I set about upgrading their five websites from version 7.1 to the maximum they now had on offer, which was 7.4. (I say "their" websites because of course I do not really own them; I am only in "ownership" for as long as I maintain payment of all associated fees.)
What was to make this project more involved than it should have been was that after supposedly succeeding with the upgrade through my HostGator cPanel, my main website ─ or the WordPress dashboard, for it that which I was logged into ─ on the baby account went offline, and this was part of the explanation left for me: "Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress".
Seeking a solution, I failed to find any websites with proper tutorials that met the exact predicament I found myself in, but I at least did find this HostGator YouTube video posted this past June 26 (2020): How To Fix "MySQL Extension" Error from MultiPHP Update - HostGator cPanel.
There was a huge problem with the video, however. You see, key to a resolution of that MySQL extension message that I had to decipher, was using cPanel to find a file identified as ".htaccess". It was going to require some modification.
I of course found the .htaccess file where the video directed it would be, but it was supposed to contain this bit of script:
# Use PHP71 as default
#AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php71/lib
</IfModule>
Mine did not. Why didn't the guy in the video deal with any such eventuality? Surely my situation could not be absolutely unique?
So I started checking out the comments below the video to see if anyone else complained about the same problem and I found one that had been left about a month ago by a YouTube user named David (David Santy, as it turns out):
"If you are still receiving the error after following the steps of this video, you may need to check for a .htaccess in the folder/directory above the one where your website is stored. If there is a PHP handler there, disable it and it should fix the issue." YES! Here's how I fixed my sites:
Click on "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of your File Manager and select "Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)".
Check for .htaccess files in your home directory. (One UP from public_html)
On my site the .htaccess file in the public_html folder inherited the php version from the home directory.
Went one folder up and there was a call for the old php version in the .htaccess file there.
If you're using a CMS like Wordpress you may have installed it to its own subfolder in public_html. Check the .htaccess file in the subfolder to see where php has been updated.
Copy the new php section from the .htaccess file in your website folder.
Open the .htaccess file in your home directory.
Comment out the old section by adding # to each line.
Paste the new php version at the end and save.
Check to see every .htaccess file up the line either inherits the php version from the parent folder, or explicitly states the correct php version you want that folder to be running.
I did not initially see this as my answer ─ it was not until I read some of the comments that his own comment had garnered that I realized a solution to my dilemma just might be within his comment.
So I studied what he said.
Sure enough ─ I went "⤴Up One Level" in the File Manager hierarchy, and there indeed was another .htaccess file. And this time, the missing text data was present.
There were five other .htaccess files there as well, each with a 10-digit number.
So I followed the video instruction with all six of them, making .bak copies of each. Then I went ahead and edited the originals by simply adding the additional "#" to the front of each of the bottom three lines:
# Use PHP71 as default
#AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
#<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
# suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php71/lib
#</IfModule>
And it was pretty much as simple as that. I refreshed the webpage where my website's WordPress dashboard was supposed to be, and there it was once more. As well, a check of "Tools" ➡ "Site Health" revealed that the notification complaining about my older PHP version was now gone.
I am a little nebuous about it now, but I may have had to also change the .htaccess files at each of the four add-on websites. But once I understood how simple that was to do, I had no difficulties.
Nevertheless, I may have spent as much as three hours from the start of this PHP upgrade to finally resolving the MySQL Extension error. I had burned out, and not performed any work on the post I had wanted to finish and publish at my website Amatsu Okiya.
I had to return to bed.
I did finally get the post published very early in the afternoon, fortunately: Geisha Designs at Quello Ⅱ.
Never has it taken me so long to work on a post; as well, it ended up containing something over 53,000 words, if you can believe that. It is by far the lengthiest post I have ever pieced together.
And I thought it was a big deal when I started regularly surpassing the 30,000-word ceiling!
Something else of lesser note occurred early last evening in that I finally finished watching the T.V. series Good Behavior.
It was quite apparent from the mostly ambiguous finish that the producers had expected to be continuing the storyline into a new season, but that was not to be.
When first I got into the series, I had no idea that I was already familiar with lead actress Michelle Dockery, I had actually grown to very much like her 'Wild West' character as a widowed mother of a half-Indian boy, and who operated her own ranch in the T.V. series Godless.
And it was not until I saw her on a talk show ─ probably The Graham Norton Show ─ that I discovered that she was very much British. She can act without even the remotest trace of her natural accent.
Having an Amazon TV Box these past two or maybe even three years has truly opened up my world to an incredible wealth of commercial-free T.V. shows and movies.
Thanks to another post-8:30 p.m. arrival home last evening by my brother, I was able to be in bed just after 9:00 p.m. When my wife came to bed eventually, my blurry vision could not quite make out the time, but I deemed it late enough that it was probably safe to rise ─ my brother likely had gone to bed by then.
However, he had not; and it was not yet quite midnight.
Putting into practice what I discussed a little earlier, I carefully slipped into this small room where I keep my computer (the room is immediately next to my bedroom). I then pulled the door almost closed, and from that point I correctly figured that my brother would know no better and just assume that it was my wife in here.
Normally I would have begun the groundwork for a new post, but I wanted instead to make two posts into my private blog ─ one for yesterday and the other for today, clearing up my day to work exclusively on this post.
I was not to be able to return to bed until well after 4 a.m. ─ maybe even more like 5 a.m.
Yet after some sleep, I was up once more before it was quite 9 a.m. My brother was still in his bedroom, and not to emerge until nigh 9:30 a.m.
On my agenda was the PHP upgrade of one other website that I have ─ this one is on its own at an account with JustHost. Unfortunately, I was to discover that although I would be able to upgrade the PHP fairly easily, I could not upgrade it any higher than version 7.3 ─ my WordPress "Site Health" check still bellyaches because 7.3 is not the 7.4 that ought to be in place at websites by now.
I left JustHost a bit of a bitch in that regard, for I also had to do all the work to get the website set up with a SSL certificate a year ago or more so I could convert it from "HTTP" to "HTTPS".
Webhosts seem to take their damned sweet time making these features freely available to their customers! But there is nothing else I can do about the PHP. If version 7.4 is not yet supported by JustHost, no conversion to it is possible for me.
It's a shame that we website "owners" have to bother with hosting companies. The Internet should somehow be free of this necessary evil (i.e., hosting companies).
It turned out today that my wife did not have to report for work until the latter half of the afternoon, so I got a very late start on the day's exercising as well as a needed nap. In fact, I still have some further exercising to deal with before I can consider myself to have achieved my minimal output for the day, and it is already 6:21 p.m. as I type these words.
I could have done some sunning this afternoon, and I did set about at least going into the backyard quite early in the afternoon to spend some time sitting out there ─ perhaps topless. However, I discovered my wife to be using that area of the lawn for her exercising, and I did not wish to discourage her by intruding.
But I did take these five candid photos (1:14 / 1:15 p.m.) of her, filmed through a rather dirty window:
About a month ago at most, the dear woman became an agent for a Thai company (The iCon Group) that sells certain health products ─ hers seem to fall under the brand names BOOM and ROOM.
This is proving expensive for my credit debt, because she has to use my VISA credit card to buy her wares. Just today, she made a third (and thus far, the largest) such purchase that added well over $2,300 onto my card's balance.
Each time she makes a purchase, she has only paid part of the total, and today has promised to very soon pay back $2,000 ─ which I damned well hope she does.
I am a pensioner with just a monthly pension for income ─ I do not have the lifespan remaining to ever be able to clear away the debt on that card that she is responsible for. By now, the balance must be in the neighbourhood of $8,000.
I had best stop posting here. I have been feeling unnaturally at peace with myself since late Saturday afternoon, so I do not wish to start dwelling on such negativity. It only feeds my presently constrained malus genius.
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