Critical Error

It’s still working fine for me in WP 5.9.3. Have you made any changes to your setup recently? WP or plugin updates, for example?

I have now tested this with all other plugins disabled and a neutral theme. Saving any preference still gives the message “There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.” This is WP version 6. Please advise.

OK, I have tested in WP 6 as well, and have no problems with any of the functionality. I will see if I can figure out a way to get more information about the problem you are seeing.

You could try uninstalling and reinstalling Search Meter, but if you do that you will lose all your search statistics.

I will let you know if I come up with a way to get more information from you.

Hi Bennett, The critical error when saving the settings is related to a depreciated php function; for those who have upgraded the server to PHP v8+.
Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function get_magic_quotes_gpc()

An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 519 of the file /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-content/plugins/search-meter/admin.php.

Error Details
=============
An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 519 of the file /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-content/plugins/search-meter/admin.php.
Error message: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function get_magic_quotes_gpc() in /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-content/plugins/search-meter/admin.php:519
Stack trace:
#0 /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(307): tguy_sm_options_page()
#1 /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(331): WP_Hook->apply_filters()
#2 /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(476): WP_Hook->do_action()
#3 /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-admin/admin.php(259): do_action()
#4 /home/_____._____.com/_____/public_html/wp-admin/options-general.php(10): require_once('/home/_____.__...')
#5 {main}
  thrown

Hope this helps.

Same issue with PHP8.0, switch to PHP7.4 fix this issue.

Sorry all, I did not encounter this during my (minimal) testing. Hopefully I will be able to fix this sometime in the next week.

I am upgraded all my sites to PHP 8.0 and the latest WP and Search Meter, hopefully I can get this fixed soon. But maybe not till next year ??

Hi Bennett, Welcome to a new year and thank you for taking the time to configure the pre-requisite conditions to reproduce the error (PHP v8 runtime environment).

1. Navigate to the ‘Search Meter’ settings page at /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=search-meter%2Fadmin.php
2. Click the [Save Changes] button.
   Note that you don’t have to make any changes.
3. This should now show a “There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions” message and send an email to the site administrator (if wordpress is configured to send out through an email provider).

The critical error occurs because the ‘Search Meter’ plugin uses a PHP function that was depreciated/removed from the PHP runtime environment. get_magic_quotes_gpc() no longer exists to be called or used and needs to be removed. The intention of what the plugin code was doing is just fine, it’s the function called to fulfil that intention that needs to be changed.

This Stack Overflow discussion has lots of useful background information supporting the proposed solution.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61054418/php-7-4-deprecated-get-magic-quotes-gpc-function-alternative

Thanks for that detailed information. This problem is fixed in the latest Search Meter (2.13.5). When I have time i will review the plugin code more thoroughly in case there are other compatibility problems with PHP 8.

Hi Bennett, Awesome. Confirmed that v2.13.5 has fixed the issue running on PHP 8.0/8.1.