Thread

I need to make some changes to a site that was running 2.5.2, so I thought this would be a good time to update to the latest version. EE’s update process is so cumbersome that I haven’t kept up, and the site has not had many changes since development a few years ago.

I checked the changelog and nothing jumped out at me so I went ahead backing up and uploading files. Then when I went to upgrade I was told that I need to update PHP from 5.1.6 to 5.3.2. Funny I didn’t see any mention of this major issue in the changelog! The site was offline, the upgrade half done, I had to contact the host about a server migration then undo what I had done. I’m now in a cue to be migrated to a new server with PHP 5.3.2 but was warned to check other scripts for compatibility.

This is not an easy task! I downloaded an accessory called HealthCheck just to get a list of all the addons. I can’t tell from the list which are native and which are third party. I can’t remember the code well enough to know which were used for what. I started the process of looking up / contacting addon developers but this could take hours, and even then I’m not sure I will have covered all the bases.

So now I’m wondering why upgrade at all? I’d like to for security reasons, but I can’t charge a client several hours time to update software. I expected this to take half an hour and it’s eaten up most of my day . . . and is still not resolved. I’m really afraid that if I go ahead with the migration that something will break and I will have many more hours of troubleshooting ahead, unpaid and ultimately for nothing. Am I missing some easier path?

You can probably consolidate all your add-ons via the Devote-EE plugin/extension which checks for updates and gives some data on when the add-ons were updated. It won’t tell you about compatibility but you can work it out by recent dates of the add-on release.

Likewise Solspace have a compatibility chart for their software here.

Personally I would hold off on it unless I am starting a new site from scratch and can control the workflow and know which add-ons are needed. It seems like a momentous upgrade in some ways.

Thanks for the tip about the Devot-ee Monitor addon. Unfortunately, it needs the more recent version of PHP as well. But David on Devot-ee’s support forum suggested I copy the whole site to my local server and test the updated PHP there, which is a good suggestion. Still wish these updates weren’t so time-consuming and complex.

Don’t upgrade your EE to 2.8.1.
I found two serious bugs today while i was developing a site, i’ve submitted both bugs here -
https://support.ellislab.com/bugs/detail/20263
https://support.ellislab.com/bugs/detail/20264

and ofcourse, all addons aren’t compitable with latest EE(I’ve to fixed few myself, ex: geotagger)

So better you upgrade to 2.7.x for now

Thanks so much Musa. I’ve held off on the update since the risks seem greater than the reward, and I appreciate knowing about 2.8.

Musa,

How did you get Geotagger working again? I changed line 47 of ft.geotagger.php from

parent::EE_Fieldtype();

to

EE_Fieldtype::__construct();

which got it to install successfully, but it’s still not working. When I put in my location information and hit “Geotag Entry”, it displays

Geocode was not successful for the following reason: ZERO_RESULTS

I also tried

parent::__construct();

but got the same results - zero.

Is there some other portion of the plugin code that needs to be changed?

I’ve made it working. I had to do a dirtcy hack in native EE fieldtype code, if you’ve used only text fieldtype for geotagging, you should replace following code in /system/expressionengine/fieldtypes/text/ft.text.php

$field = array(
   'name'  => $this->field_name,
   'value'  => $this->_format_number($data, $type),
   'dir'  => $this->settings['field_text_direction'],
   'field_content_type' => $type
  );

by

$field = array(
   'id'  => $this->field_name,
   'name'  => $this->field_name,
   'value'  => $this->_format_number($data, $type),
   'dir'  => $this->settings['field_text_direction'],
   'field_content_type' => $type
  );

Line 101-106. Actually EE dropped ID attribute for input field which causes the issue.

If you’re using any other field type(textarea or other) for geotagging, you’ve to do the same. Let me know if this solves your issue.

Musa,

How did you get Geotagger working again? I changed line 47 of ft.geotagger.php from

parent::EE_Fieldtype();

to

EE_Fieldtype::__construct();

which got it to install successfully, but it’s still not working. When I put in my location information and hit “Geotag Entry”, it displays

Geocode was not successful for the following reason: ZERO_RESULTS

I also tried

parent::__construct();

but got the same results - zero.

Is there some other portion of the plugin code that needs to be changed?

Thanks Musa!