I am trying to upgrade our forum from 3.0.11 to 3.2.x - yes, we are that outdated and are in danger of loosing support for our old PHP version. We are with BlueHost. I am following to the letter the upgrade instructions provided a while ago by Robert (Lumpy) here:
viewtopic.php?p=15360546#p15360546
So far no luck and my biggest suspect is PHP version problem. With BlueHost we are limited to either "PHP 5.2 (eig-php52)" - this is what our phpBB 3.0.11 runs with - or PHP 7.0 (ea-php70) and above. I have downloaded phpBB version 3.1 and FTPed it into our home directory on BlueHost, retaining old config.php and /images /files/ and /store folders. According to Robert, for the upgrade our PHP version should have been "at least PHP 5.4 and less than PHP 7". Well, when I attempt
.../install/database_update.php
via the browser with PHP 5.2 active, I get Error 500. When I switch us to PHP 7.0 I get something more intelligent, yet not the expected:General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]
mysql_connect function does not exist, is mysql extension installed? []
BACKTRACE
FILE: (not given by php)
LINE: (not given by php)
CALL: msg_handler()
and more of the same.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised as BlueHost does not offer required "5.4 but less than 7" version of PHP.
Question: should we try different version sequence along the upgrade path and what PHP versions would that require? BlueHost offers every single one from 7.0 through 7.4 . I don't have high hopes of them supplying us with anything between 5.2 and 7.0.
Thanks in advance,
Alex