Problems with upgrading to Serendipity 1.6.2

[mattpoacher]

Hi,

I'm a bit of an (ie total) amateur with this stuff, but when my host upgraded their PHP it broke my site and I was advised to upgrade to the latest release of Serendipity (it hadn't been upgraded in a good long while - maybe 3 or 4 years).

Anyway, I've downloaded the latest release and FTP'd the files across to my public_html folder and overwritten as instructed and everything is now broken.

The site url is: http://www.mountain7.co.uk/ and the back end is: http://www.mountain7.co.uk/serendipity_admin.php

I would really appreciate any help anyone could provide.

Thank you,

Matt

[yellowled]

I'm a bit of an (ie total) amateur with this stuff, but when my host upgraded their PHP it broke my site and I was advised to upgrade to the latest release of Serendipity (it hadn't been upgraded in a good long while - maybe 3 or 4 years).

To the "real coders" in this support forum, it might be helpful to know

* which version of PHP your host is running now
* from which version of s9y you upgraded to 1.6.2

Anyway, I've downloaded the latest release and FTP'd the files across to my public_html folder and overwritten as instructed and everything is now broken.

Since your backend login gives a blank page and your frontend emits an error message, it is rather likely you didn't upload (all) the files properly. Some FTP clients do not overwrite files properly but "continue" the upload, i.e. try to add the uploaded file to the existing file if that makes any sense.

Then there's the issue of uploading files in ASCII or binary mode. Most current FTP clients should handle this automagically (as a rule of thumb, anything which is a text file in the broadest sense should be transmitted in ASCII mode; all this also depends on the OSes of the system you're uploading from and to, so generally, automatic mode should be preferred to handle this).

This may sound very "The IT crowd", but have you tried uploading all the files again, overwriting the present ones?

YL

[mattpoacher]

Thanks for your response, yellowled.

I upgraded from 1.2.1 and my host upgraded to PHP version 5.3.13.

I used FileZilla to upload everything - would that do things 'automagically'? I'll re-download the latest Serendipity release and try the FTP upload again as you suggest and see what happens.

Thanks again for your response.

Matt

[mattpoacher]

Have just transferred the files again and got the same result - fatal error on home page: http://www.mountain7.co.uk/ and plank on the back end: http://www.mountain7.co.uk/serendipity_admin.php

Thanks,

Matt

[yellowled]

I used FileZilla to upload everything - would that do things 'automagically'?

It depends, like it always does, on your settings.

It's a bit difficult to describe since I use a German Filezilla, but in the settings, you should find an option called "file types" or something. If the standard transfer type there is set to "automatically", you're good. Right below that, there should be an option called "action when file exists" or something like that (translating on the fly here), there you can set overwriting behaviour on existing files. Just make sure that it overwrites exisiting files instead on continueing the upload.

If that's not it, I'm out, but I'm sure Garvin and the other guys will have some ideas as to what might have gone wrong here.

YL

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

To me it also sounds as if you did not upload ALL files; serendipity_checkCommenTTokenModeration() is found in include/functions_comments.inc.php - check if that file exists on your server and has the same file size like in your s9y 1.6.2 release zip/tarball.

I guess that a similar error is preventing the backend to show up.

Regards
Garvin

[mattpoacher]

Hi Gavin,

I've gone through and checked each file and they all appear to have copied across to the file manager on cpanel - including the serendipity_checkCommenTTokenModeration(). Still nothing.

I could be missing something very obvious here - are there any actions to perform once the files are copied across? If not, I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Both my site and back end are still showing as blank.

Thanks again,

Matt

[yellowled]

I could be missing something very obvious here - are there any actions to perform once the files are copied across?

Usually, you would open your login page in the browser. If there were steps to follow, you'd be prompted with these steps on the admin login. Since your admin login shows a blank page, that's probably not it …

I would still assume that something went wrong with the upload here.

YL

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I don't exactly know what you mean with "copied across" etc. So when you remotely (not locally on your harddrive) open the include/functions_comments.inc.php file, the mentioned function is there inside the file?

I can offer to have a look at the installation, if you want to provide me with access - if you want that, please contact me via PM.

Best regards,
Garvin

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I checked the installation; seems the files were now in order, the only thing preventing it working correctly was that some temporary files in templates_c/ were not writable. I removed all smarty *.tpl.php files (so that Smarty can write them again) and now everything seems to work?

Regards,
Garvin

[mattpoacher]

Thank you SO much Gavin - I was clearly well out of my league with this!

Thanks again.

Matt