My site suddenly white screened this morning.

We do have siteground setting set to automatically upgrade php versions.

When I checked it was set to: 7.4.29

So I rolled back to 7.3.33 and the site came back online.

I tested these versions PHP8.1.6 and PHP8.0.19 and both these white screened as well.

So the only version working I can choose from is 7.3.33

However I get a warning saying  "We recommend that you do NOT use a PHP version 7.3 or below, as these PHP versions are out of active support and their use will soon be discontinued on our servers."

Please advise on what we need to do to get a newer version of PHP that does not cause a white screen?

You might consider installing the Requirements Checker found below on your server to see if the current PHP settings meet the minimum requirements for the IPS Suite. Once installed you open up a browser and type in your domain followed by ips4.php like this: https://www.mydomain.com/ips4.php

It's not out of the realm of possibility that one of the required php addons is not being loaded.  This checker may alert you of which one.  If one or more are not being loaded, then you need to work with your hosting provider to get them loaded for you.  If you manage your php settings via a GUI interface all you might have to do is to select the missing addons and save the settings.  

 

 

You might consider installing the Requirements Checker

It all looks ok:

PHP Requirements

• PHP version 7.3.33.
• cURL extension loaded
• DOM extension loaded.
• GD extension loaded.
• Multibyte String extension loaded.
• MySQLi extension loaded.
• OpenSSL extension loaded.
• Session extension loaded.
• SimpleXML extension loaded.
• XML Parser extension loaded.
• XMLReader extension loaded.
• XMLWriter extension loaded.
• Zip extension loaded.
• Exif extension loaded.
• GMP extension loaded.
• 768M memory limit.
• No Suhosin restrictions.

MySQL Requirements

• MySQL connection could not be established to perform version check. Make sure your MySQL Server version is 5.5.3 or above (5.6.2 or above recommended).

• Summary

  You are ready to install Invision Community 4.6!

But that is the version where things are working for you.

Switch to 7.4.x and run the checker again.

 

I rolled back to 7.3.33 and the site came back online

 

You tested PHP version 7.3.33 which the requirements checker found suitable.  I would recommend switching to the other PHP versions and rerun the checker again to see if one of the required modules isn't being loaded for that particular php version.

As already mentioned above, if the site is now working, the requirement checker will indeed be working. What we find with many people is they switch PHP versions expecting extensions and settings to be the same. However that wont be the case. Its likely you are missing an extension on that PHP version.

Thanks,

Didn't realise - this one white screens but requirements look ok

PHP Requirements

• PHP version 8.1.6.
• cURL extension loaded
• DOM extension loaded.
• GD extension loaded.
• Multibyte String extension loaded.
• MySQLi extension loaded.
• OpenSSL extension loaded.
• Session extension loaded.
• SimpleXML extension loaded.
• XML Parser extension loaded.
• XMLReader extension loaded.
• XMLWriter extension loaded.
• Zip extension loaded.
• Exif extension loaded.
• GMP extension loaded.
• 768M memory limit.
• No Suhosin restrictions.

8.1 isn't supported, so that isn't a good test.

7.4.x or 8.0.x

If they still return all ok, then you need to start looking at your server logs.

thanks, this one white screens

 

PHP Requirements

• PHP version 8.0.19.
• cURL extension loaded
• DOM extension loaded.
• GD extension loaded.
• Multibyte String extension loaded.
• MySQLi extension loaded.
• OpenSSL extension loaded.
• Session extension loaded.
• SimpleXML extension loaded.
• XML Parser extension loaded.
• XMLReader extension loaded.
• XMLWriter extension loaded.
• Zip extension loaded.
• Exif extension loaded.
• GMP extension loaded.
• 768M memory limit.
• No Suhosin restrictions.

 

This being the case, please check your server error logs to see what the actual error message is. It may be you have something running 3rd party that is not compatible with PHP 8