Site unreachable after php upgrade on Bluehost, help needed

[bleher]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, so please bear with me; I have been using ZenCart for several years but kept to version 1.3.8. After my hosting provider, Bluehost, upgraded to php 5.6 I could no longer gain access, and after reading the forum, added the work-around for "date_diff" to gain access to admin, however, the shop could not be reached through a web browser. I decided to make a fresh installation of version 1.5.4 altogether in a new folder, the installation completed without errors, I have full access to admin, but the site cannot be reached (error message "cannot determine page link").

Suspecting that it might have something to do with changes at Bluehost I contacted their support and got the rather unhelpful reply (Web advisor Richard on 12 March): "You need a version of zencart that is compatible with php 5.4 or php 5.6, the current version is not compatible with either of those versions." I understand version 1.5.4 was designed for php 5.6, so guess this can't be true, but Bluehost, although I have been with them for an entire decade, have not responded to further queries.

I checked all configuration files and the links in them are correct. There are no entries in the error log. Yet, the site can't be loaded.
A particularity of my setup is that the shop is hosted on a secondary domain, so the "Catalog" directory is not directly under the public_html directory, but one further down, i.e. MAINDOMAIN / public_html / SECONDARYDOMAIN / Category /
This has not posed a problem in the past when I was using version 1.3.8 and before Bluehost upgraded their php version, but may be relevant.

Any advice of what to check or change would be most appreciated as my shop remains down until I can restore access to through pointing a web browser to the Catalog directory.

Thank you in advance.

[lat9]

Check your bluehost cPanel tools. Most hosts provide a PHP version-selection tool; you could try down-leveling your PHP version to 5.3 (best) or 5.4 to see if your store comes back to life.

[mc12345678]

In the folder structure above where your new site is located, what .htaccess file(s) are present and what are the contents? Be sure to obscure any reference to an admin directory.

Also, now that you have a sub-folder location, are you expecting to access the new site by use of your previous domain name followed by the sub-directories or have you pointed your main domain name directly to the sub-directory?

[bleher]

Thanks for replies so far.
- I tried rolling back to php 5.4 with not improvement. 5.3 no longer offered on Bluehost
- The subdomain was set up directly by Bluehost donkeys years back, the domain name points directly to that subdirectory and this is how the shop would be accessed (and was successfully accessed in the past)
- the .htaccess file in the "admin" directory under the "Catalog" directory does not contain any path-related info and reads:

#
# @copyright Copyright 2003-2013 Zen Cart Development Team
# @license http://www.zen-cart.com/license/2_0.txt GNU Public License V2.0
# @version GIT: $Id: Author: DrByte Sat Dec 21 17:00:00 2013 -0500 Modified in v1.5.3 $
#
# This is used with Apache WebServers
#
# The following blocks direct HTTP requests to all filetypes in this directory recursively, except certain approved exceptions
# It also prevents the ability of any scripts to run. No type of script, be it PHP, PERL or whatever, can normally be executed if ExecCGI is disabled.
# Will also prevent people from seeing what is in the dir. and any sub-directories
#
# For this to work, you must include either 'All' or at least: 'Limit' and 'Indexes' parameters to the AllowOverride configuration in your apache/conf/httpd.conf file.
# Additionally, if you want the added protection offered by the OPTIONS directive below, you'll need to add 'Options' to the AllowOverride list, if 'All' is not specified.
# Example:
#<Directory "/usr/local/apache/htdocs">
# AllowOverride Limit Options Indexes
#</Directory>
###############################
DirectoryIndex index.php

# deny *everything*
<FilesMatch ".*\..*">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

# but now allow just *certain* necessary files:
<FilesMatch "(?i).*\.(php|js|css|html?|ico|otf|jpe?g|gif|webp|png|swf|flv|xml|xsl)$">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</FilesMatch>

IndexIgnore */*

<limit POST PUT>
order deny,allow
deny from All
</limit>


## NOTE: If you want even greater security to prevent hackers from running scripts in this folder, uncomment the following line (if your hosting company will allow you to use OPTIONS):
# OPTIONS -Indexes -ExecCGI



##################
## Optional caching improvements
## Requires mod_header and mod_deflate to be enabled within Apache
##################
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset Pragma
FileETag None
Header unset ETag
#Header set Cache-Control "no-transform"
<FilesMatch "(?i).*\.(ico|jpe?g|gif|otf|webp|png|swf|flv|svg|svgz)$">
Header set Cache-control "max-age=864000, public, must-revalidate"
Header unset Last-Modified
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "(?i).*\.(html|htm|xml|txt|xsl)$">
Header set Cache-control "max-age=7200, must-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<FilesMatch "(?i)\.(js|css)$">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

##################
## Optional improvements
## Requires mod_expires to be enabled within Apache
##################
<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A300
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A3600
ExpiresByType text/css A3600
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType video/x-flv A604800
ExpiresByType application/pdf A604800
ExpiresByType text/html A300
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A86400
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest "access plus 0 seconds"

</ifmodule>


#turn off X-PHP-Originating-Script header when sending emails from admin
#uncomment to activate:
# php_flag mail.add_x_header Off

[mc12345678]

That's the wrong direction in the directory path... Wanting to know what .htaccess files exist and their content in folders such as:
MAINDOMAIN / public_html / SECONDARYDOMAIN / Category /
MAINDOMAIN / public_html / SECONDARYDOMAIN /
MAINDOMAIN / public_html /
And
MAINDOMAIN /

In particular in that order of folders... The first .htaccess file before the current directory will affect every sub-directory in it until another/new .htaccess file is found also, ZC does not require a .htaccess file in the root of the store. Existence of one indicates some level of modification to operation...

[bleher]

under public_html

.htaccess
# Use PHPBETA as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-phpbeta .php
# Set PHP handler to application/x-httpd-phpbeta on Fri Dec 18 07:18:52 MST 2015.

htaccess-php-upgrade-backup
[empty]

under public_html/SECONDARYDOMAIN

no htaccess file

under public_html/SECONDARYDOMAIN/Catalog
no htaccess file

under public_html/SECONDARYDOMAIN/Catalog/admin
the htaccess file quoted earlier

under the MAINDOMAIN
no htaccess file

[kobra]

shop is hosted on a secondary domain, so the "Catalog" directory is not directly under the public_html directory, but one further down, i.e. MAINDOMAIN / public_html / SECONDARYDOMAIN / Category /

Did you use the cpanel "addondomain" function to create this??

[kobra]

Almost as bad as when Windows Vista came out! I might try a clean install of 1.5.5 but am seriously considering to moving to javascript instead for providing store functions.

You must be doing something incorrectly as this is not supposed to be this hard

You can view a test install of v1.5.4 HERE
You can view a test install of v1.5.5 HERE

[mc12345678]

Forgot to mention this little tidbit. To see what version of PHP ZC is "seeing", in the folder for the store, create a file of your chosen name (please don't post it and do not call it something obvious) that has the following content. Once created, try to access it and should be shown what PHP version your system is setup to present to ZC.

<?php echo phpnfo();

[DrByte]

FWIW all the issues ZC v154 had with PHP 5.2 are fixed in v155