PHP 8.x breaks 3.10 site

I'm running 3.10.12 and see the following messaging when in the admin dashboard:

We have detected that your server is using PHP 7.4.33 which is obsolete and no longer receives official security updates by its developers. The Joomla! Project recommends upgrading your site to PHP 8.0 or later which will receive security updates at least until 2023-11-26. Please ask your host to make PHP 8.0 or a later version the default version for your site. If your host is already PHP 8.0 ready please enable PHP 8.0 on your site's root and 'administrator' directories – typically you can do this yourself through a tool in your hosting control panel, but it's best to ask your host if you are unsure.

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When I change the PHP from 7.4 to 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, etc at my shared host, the entire site breaks and displays raw-html error code. The browser doesn't even render the html. Any ideas? All my plugins are up to date. Do I need to check if they all support 8 specifically?

upgrade your joomla to joomla5

Technical Requirements to start using Joomla 5!​

PHP minimum 8.1.0 version is needed; however, it is recommended to upgrade it to version 8.2.

Databases to upgrade:

• MySQL 8.0.13 version can be used, though Joomla 5 will give best results with MySQL 8.1.
• Similarly, MariaDB 11.1.0 is suggested, however, version 10.4.0 will also do.
• PostgreSQL version 16.0 is needed, and the minimum requirement is version 12.0.
• Web server upgrade is also required:
• Apache's minimum requirement is 2.4 and recommended version is 2.4.
• Nginx 1.25 is recommended and 1.21 can be used as well.
• Microsoft IIS 10 is required.

yeah.. i dont know any "simple" way to solve that. Your problem has to do with the template, which is built in part with php and doesnt support the latest 8.x versions. You had to correct all the php errors in the template coding to make it work with that 8.x php version. joomla 4/5 doesnt support anything earlier than 8.0 (i think). Actually i have the same problem, and i still didnt have it solved. i'm not a programmer and theres a lot of code to debug and correct. you have this guys info about it.. https://timoanttila.com/blog/php-upgrade

brokenscreenagain said:

I'm running 3.10.12 and see the following messaging when in the admin dashboard:



When I change the PHP from 7.4 to 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, etc at my shared host, the entire site breaks and displays raw-html error code. The browser doesn't even render the html. Any ideas? All my plugins are up to date. Do I need to check if they all support 8 specifically?

Click to expand...

You are doing better than I am if you are running J!3.10.12 on php7.4. I'm running on php7.2 and when I try and update to 7.4 I get an error message without any details. I don't think that J!3 supports php8 if I remember correctly so you will have to upgrade to J!4. Good luck and I hope you get it figured it. Please let us know if you.

PirateKitty said:

You are doing better than I am if you are running J!3.10.12 on php7.4. I'm running on php7.2 and when I try and update to 7.4 I get an error message without any details. I don't think that J!3 supports php8 if I remember correctly so you will have to upgrade to J!4. Good luck and I hope you get it figured it. Please let us know if you.

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I finally got my J!3.10 to upgrade to php7.4 and even to php8. But it was not easy and something broke Joomla when I finally upgraded to J!4.
In order to do this, you have to make sure that you are using the latest version / last version released for J!3. Some developers made sure that their software was compatible with J!4 so it'll work on J!3 & J!4. Others made a completely new version that only supports J!4 & J!5.
Alright, so once you've confirmed that all of the software is ready to go, next check your htaccess.txt or .htaccess file. I had something in mine that talked about 7.2 and so what I did was delete the whole thing. Once I did that I was able to update to php7.4.
During your software check, make sure all of the extensions supports php8., if you are in doubt, disable or uninstall it if you can. Once everything is disabled or uninstalled you should be able to upgrade to php8.
If after following the above, if you are able to upgrade to php8, start slowly re-enabling your extensions. If you enable an extension that breaks your site you will have to downgrade back to 7.x re-disable the extension and upgrade back to php8. Then of course find out why that extension broke your site.

I hope this helps anyone who is looking to ugprade