Support

January 17, 2024 at 2:21 pm

Hi there,

We’ve had a couple of reports of a fatal and spent some time investigating it, found the cause and pushed another update to fit that (5.0.14.p)

If you update to the latest version you shouldn’t have any further issues.

Note – this issue was due to an incompatibility when used with PHP7.4.XX which has not been EOL for over a year. I recommend setting to time aside to switch to PHP8.X, you may find that some plugins are incompatible with that version of PHP and/or need to be updated.

January 18, 2024 at 2:20 am

Error 502?

As in 502 Bad Gateway?

7.4.33 is the same version running on the site I’m testing 5.0.14.p against and not getting an error.

Can I take a look? If so I can enable WP_DEBUG and should be able narrow down what is causing the error. For that I would need WP Admin and FTP credetnails which you can provide using this form:

https://eventespresso.com/send-login-details/

January 18, 2024 at 3:38 am

Our site is on 7.4.33 and previouly crashed when updating to the last 5.0.14 EE update.

I assume you mean 5.0.13 here?

Is this going to happen when updating to 5.0.14p?

5.0.14.p is working correctly for me on PHP7.4.33 so it should work fine.

If you have FTP credentials for the site I can run the update for you if preferred, then if there is an issue I can revert/fix for you.

What did you change in order to make it work with 7.4.33?

We had some code that handled an exception thrown by the PayPal payment method fine in PHP8 but in PHP7.4 it would throw an error, so we changed how we handled the exception to prevent it.

January 18, 2024 at 3:40 pm

I’ve been working with another user on SiteGround having this exact same issue…

I have the exact same PHP version number installed (7.4.33) on multiple different servers and Event Espresso 5.0.14.p runs fine there.

However, as soon as I activate EE5.0.14.p on SiteGrounds PHP7.4 version, I get error 500. No errors are logged and I can’t enable error reporting to view anything more than SiteGrounds custom error page.

If I update the PHP version to PHP8+ on SiteGround, everything works fine.

I’ve opened a support ticket with SiteGround regarding this as I need the error being thrown on their severs to investigate this further. Their response so far is that Event Espresso must not be compatible with PHP7.4, but again I’m using exactly the same version elsewhere without any issue, so I need the specific error being thrown to be able to investigate.

—

Right now to fix this in SiteGround you’ll need to change PHP versions.

Siteground Dashboard -> Site -> Devs -> PHP Manager.

Under Live sites make sure you have the correct domain selected.

Under PHP version, click to edit the version.

Change from managed PHP to manual:
https://monosnap.com/file/7rEPcGL3ClYiV6CwhVbOKt9TcCFbyr

Select PHP8.0.30 or higher:
https://monosnap.com/file/8fMKUOllAzn5fRzkawvsCKRTbdKqOK

Confirm.

EE5.0.14.p will now work.

—

Whist this doesn’t really prove anything, here’s a quick screenshot from a ‘live’ site running 7.4.33 elsewhere:

https://monosnap.com/file/xzNFyNZzEkutNOBZ4f0MCoB5hFH7Wn

That site is running EE5.0.14.p

January 19, 2024 at 3:17 am

Thanks for your comments bmachuel. I just did the same: created a staging site, updated to 5.0.14p and boom – 500 Server Error. Before I did the update I turned on WP debug. Nothing on page, nothing in SG Error log and nothing in pho error log. So, at this point I thing it is fruitless to continue trying. While I know Tony would like to know why – I don’t think we’ll find out.

So, while I had the staging copy up, I selected php 8.1.27 to run and everything came alive – as you both may have found. Other than “PayPal Commerce has updated the API integration type to allow more flexibility with payments. Please disconnect and re-Connect on the Payment Methods admin page to update the credentials and allow advanced payment type options.” I found nothing awry to lead me to believe I should not move up to php 8.1.27 BEFORE I update EE to 5.0.14p. My other main plugins all seem to be running fine. I just need to check Gravity Forms and Paid Memberships Pro support site to confirm.

Have either of you used WP Engine PHP Compatibility Checker to test theme and plugins for php version changes?

https://wordpress.org/plugins/php-compatibility-checker/

January 19, 2024 at 3:12 pm

I’ve just pushed an update live that should fix this (version 5.0.15.p)

Please update to the latest version of Event Espresso and see if you still have an issue. If you don’t see the update available just yet then go to Dashboard -> Event Espresso -> General Settings.

Don’t make any changes, just hit save.

Now the update should show in Dashboard -> Plugins.

—

For anyone interested in this, on SiteGround (and so far only on SiteGround) this code:

protected ?EEM_Base $_model = null;

Thats in \event-espresso-core\core\EE_Capabilities.core.php

As it is it throws a fatal with no details.

That code is perfectly valid and is setting a typed property to allow it to be either null (done with the ?) or an instance of EEM_Base.

If I ‘break’ the type setting with something like:
protected EEM_Base $_model = null; (removed the ? meaning the property can’t be null anymore)

It correctly blows up with an error because it can’t be null, but is set to null!

Or if I set the type wrong:
protected ?something $_model = null;

Again it correctly blows up because it’s not an instance of ‘something’ or null!

But as soon as I set the above back to ?EEM_Base the site instantly goes down with no error to find. In short, it looks like something is going a miss on the version of PHP installed on SiteGround.

We’ve applied a patch in EE core to work around this by replacing the above with:

    /**
     * @var EEM_Base
     */
    protected $_model = null;

Which is ‘ok’, but the original code is valid for PHP7.4 and should work.

January 21, 2024 at 3:06 am

Thank you Tony for the excellent diagnostic work here. I have not patched with the latest 5.0.15.p but will do so soon. We will probably be moving up to php 8.1.27 as well since it’s only a matter of time that 7xx will go away.