Should I update Joomla

[Ampere]

I am an electrician and had a website made for me on Joomla about 4 years ago. It's become slowwwwww. I really have to get off my ass and make a new one or have someone do it, but in the meantime I'd like to know whether I should update Joomla?

My concern is if I update it, the website will stop working. That is something that I heard could happen. There are various modules and extensions on there such as JSN and K2. I don't know what's what. I would really like to just paste all the content into a different website, but this is what I have for now.

 

[Ampere]

I guess the answer is no

I updated Joomla and my site lost most of the formatting. Now it is just text and images. The text is still styled like it was, but nothing is in the right place.

One thing that I noticed is that the newest version of Joomla says that it needs PHP version 7. My hosting server only has up to 5.6 right now. But my website is in the process of being migrated to a new server, which I assume will have current PHP.

Could my formatting issue be caused by PHP? If so, I would be super happy.

 

[djbaxter]

Yes. And it's a good thing you are migrating to a new server. PHP is at version 7.3 now. PHP 5.6 has been end of life for some time and I think even PHP 7.0 is end of life now.

 

[Ampere]

Ok, that makes me very happy to hear. If switching to the new server fixes the corruption I would be very happy.

My concern was that the issue was with an extension that didn't work with the newer version of Joomla (or one of the other extensions I updated) and I would never figure out which one.

 

[djbaxter]

I don't know a lot about Joomla but the procedure is the same for any software when a plugin or extension is suspected: Disable them all first - if the problem is resolved then enable them one by one until the problem recurs. That last one is your problem.

 

[Ampere]

Ok, I will try that if things aren't fixed once it is migrated.

My issue seems to be the absence of formatting. So I am hoping the PHP upgrade helps it.

 

[Nikki Stine]

I maintain a handful of Joomla sites, and we had a similar situation with a client last year. It had an older version of Joomla and when the site was moved from a server with PHP version 5.6 to a new server with PHP 7, the site "broke".

At the time, the developer didn't realize what caused the issue and so he ended up rebuilding the site in the latest version of Joomla.

I'd be interested to hear how things go for you once you move to your new server.

 

[Ampere]

I maintain a handful of Joomla sites, and we had a similar situation with a client last year. It had an older version of Joomla and when the site was moved from a server with PHP version 5.6 to a new server with PHP 7, the site "broke".

At the time, the developer didn't realize what caused the issue and so he ended up rebuilding the site in the latest version of Joomla.

I'd be interested to hear how things go for you once you move to your new server.

I'll be sure to post what I find.

As for the issue that you mentioned, they did not try to just update Joomla and see if that helped?

My issue is the opposite, my site broke (lost it's formatting at least, everything else works) when I updated Joomla, and I am hoping that migrating from the PHP 5.6 server to the PHP 7+ server will fix it.

 

[Nikki Stine]

As for the issue that you mentioned, they did not try to just update Joomla and see if that helped?

I can't say for sure. I was working with a developer and he thought the issues were caused by some blogging spam (a bunch of fakes users had been created) that was bloating the site. But in the end, it ended up being the PHP version.

So I can't say for sure what order he did the upgrade/move to different PHP server. And it's kinda why I'm curious how things will go for you. My understanding of Joomla has grown by leaps and bounds since this incident.

 

[Ampere]

My website is migrated and the PHP is now 7.3, and Joomla is not showing the error anymore, so that is fixed.

But the main problem of the lost formatting is still there. It seems as if it lost style sheets, but how can that happen when updating Joomla and extensions?

 

[djbaxter]

I don't use Joomla but if you are using a custom style/theme it may need to be updated. Does it display okay if you use the default Joomla style, assuming there is one?

 

[Nikki Stine]

It would be the Template you are using to double check. Does it require updating?

 

[Ampere]

It would be the Template you are using to double check. Does it require updating?

Now I have a different issue. I tried updating the template. Part of it updated but not the other part:



When I click on that red UPDATE button, it just hangs now instead of giving me the dialog to enter my username or anything else:


But worse of all, y site is down and gets this error on every page:



I don't know what to do :-(

I assume the first issue might be fixed once I fix this second issue and get the templates updated. But I dont know how to do that.

 

[Nikki Stine]

If you have access to support or documents, you may be able to get instructions on how to update the template manually through FTP.

 

[Ampere]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try to find something. This is all new to me lol.