PHP 5.2 change broke my weblogs – how do I repair them please?

The link the to advice to change the PHP setting is linked from this WordPress forum post:

Thanks,

Gavin Atkin

Soz – managed to make my sign-off link to the post linking to the advice in question.

My weblogs are still not functioning, so I would say read it if you like – but don’t do what it says!

Gavin

You also exposed your wp-config.php as downloadable file. Consider to change database access credentials.

Your blog screwed because PHP files are not executable

AddHandler x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

must be added to some apache config, maybe .htaccess, but i dont know your host

I’ve set the permissions to 755… But this is way beyond anything I understand.

If that’s what it needs, hopefully Bluehost will tell me what files I must change.

Gavin

Thanks Yui… Hopefully no-one’s done anything bad!

Gavin

Following some advice I have switched to PHP 5.4 (Single php.ini) but sadly the problem remains and my weblogs remain broken.

I have pasted an example of the contents of the small file my web browsers download whenever I go to one of weblogs using a web browsers.

I would be most grateful for any advice on how to make these installs work once again. I do wonder whether reinstalling WordPress might help – though naturally I am anxious not to over-write the database or other contents.

Gavin

The filename is: zNlR0hDp

The content is:

<?php
/**
* Front to the WordPress application. This file doesn’t do anything, but loads
* wp-blog-header.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme.
*
* @package WordPress
*/

/**
* Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it.
*
* @var bool
*/
define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, true);

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’);

If I do reinstall, should I do this using the Wp installation features of my host’s control panel, or should I do it manually using ftp?

And what precautions would I have to take to avoid over-writing content?

Thanks, Gavin

I’ve just found my security was /still/ turned off, and have now set everything to 755. Is that correct?

Now I’m even more puzzled. It turns out that two of my three current weblogs are down, but one is still working – https://julieandhersqueeze.com .

I really wish I knew what to do!

Gavin

Have you asked BlueHost for help?

I did. It takes quite a few hours for them to respond, and their first advice didn’t change anything.

My guess was that they would not feel it was their place to get too closely involved – after all, the issue was not that their servers were not working but that they had a client (me) that had done something stupid.

The second they got in touch, however, they reported they had made some php code changes somewhere that fixed the thing. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised and mightily relieved. I genuinely imagined I would have to rely on this forum for detailed advice – I had no idea that they’d step in and put things right.

Gavin