I know Go Daddy is terrible. But one of my clients purchased multiple years of hosting from them before I created her site, so I have no other options until 2019. Argh.
A few weeks ago, out of the blue, we started seeing these error messages at the top of the contact page:
Warning: session_start(): open(/home/content/55/9730055/tmp/sess_r9abb25hkl5fklrjt4pe63bnr4, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in /home/content/55/9730055/html/contact-form/index.php on line 3
Warning: session_start(): Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/55/9730055/html/contact-form/index.php:3) in /home/content/55/9730055/html/contact-form/index.php on line 3
Warning: session_start(): Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home/content/55/9730055/html/contact-form/index.php:3) in /home/content/55/9730055/html/contact-form/index.php on line 3
We called to see what happened and they had no idea. So they switched her to a “new” server still Linux running PHP 5.4. I re-published all the file and I tried FormLoom as well—same errors. I know I eventually have to call Go Daddy but I wanted to check with you guys first, because their support is consistently awful and I’m dreading it.
Any ideas? I’m more of a designer and not a coder, but I know enough to cause trouble.
This is really sad that they do not have an option for 5.6. PHP 5.5 is end of life, so that tells you how old 5.4 is let alone 5.3. You can get more info on what versions of PHP are no longer supported and when they stopped being supported here:
PHP 5.3 - Released - 30 June 2009 | Ended - 14 August 2014
PHP 5.4 - Released - 1 March 2012 | Ended - 3 September 2015
So 5.4 has a death date of or around 1.5 years ago. Sad…
You might be able to contact them and see if they can get you a higher version…
That forum link I posted - they need to upgrade that users cPanel first. I’d reference that thread if you get any guff from the customer service. If you get that updated, you’ll at least be able to narrow down your troubleshooting.
Yes, and be sure they send you the instructions on how to do it. With the instructions, it’s a piece of cake, without, (since you’re not a coder), I can pretty much bet you’ll be lost. Basically, you’ll need to create a placeholder URL/Domain first, transfer the files to it, and then replace the placeholder with your client’s domain.
I’ve done it several times, and it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. In addition, if you get stuck, call their tech support. Although their person can’t actually do the work for you - he/she will stay on the phone with you while you do it. At least, that’s my experience.
Oh, and in my experience, there’s absolutely no charge for them to move you from their legacy plan to a new cPanel plan. Once you’ve upgraded, check the version of PHP the cPanel is running - you might want to bump it up to 5.6…if it’s still on 5.4 or 5.5.
And yes, I’m not a real coder. I mean, in 1981 when I was 11 I would buy magazines for my Commodore 64 with pages of Basic for a simple game that I’d type in for hours and hope the power brick didn’t overheat and erase it all, since I couldn’t afford the floppy drive. I took Pascal in high school, and I use CSS and I get how stuff works in general, but I don’t love it like real coders do, so I just learn enough so I can get stuff done, you know?
I’m going to contact them now. Cross your fingers. Heck, cross everything ya got two of LOL.
lol, we’ve been around the same block - I did the same thing back in the early 80s. Keep in mind that the domain you’ll use to create the placeholder does not need to be a valid domain…so don’t go buy a new one just for this. Once everything is setup, you’ll just swap out your client’s domain for the one you used temporarily. Let me know if you have trouble.
Oh, and the phone people at GoDaddy are all state-side…so, they are very easy to understand.
I use go daddy too. You will have to get your client to move to a updated server. I had that issue too a while back. She might have to pay a service fee with godaddy. I was fortunate that I was upping with them again so my upgrade was free. Also make sure your not on a windows server. That was another one of my problems.
It took some time but everything seems to be working well, now. Thanks again everybody for your assistance. The RapidWeaver community is small but laser-focused and super-helpful.
I decided to live chat with Go Daddy instead of calling them, so I would have a record of what they promised me in case somebody screwed up. This approach works well with Comcast, too
I chatted with a Go Daddy agent for 72 minutes. It took unnecessarily long for him to finally agree to upgrade me to the new cPanel, insisting on testing the contact page of the site first, but he obviously saw the error messages on the screen so I wish he wouldn’t just gotten on with it to save us some time. But he walked me through the process which was helpful. He gave me instructions to delete the current hosting plan and then he added a new one for us. It took some time to take effect. I asked him to assure me that this upgrade wouldn’t cost anything and he eventually confirmed there would be no charge. He credited my client with the amount she paid for two years of hosting after we deleted the plan, then he added the new plan and charged us for it—but it was covered by the refund so it evened out.
I immediately checked the PHP settings and it defaulted to PHP 5.6. WOOT.
After we ended the chat I created a new FTP account—everything required new logins and passwords. I re-published the site via Rapidweaver. (Note: with RW and Go Daddy you can’t publish a website with any setting higher than 3 — 3 file uploads at once. Anything more than 3 and it errors out. At least in my experience with multiple clients and projects. With iPage and other hosts I can set it to 6.)
The error messages on the contact page were gone, but emails would still not go through. So I went into MX Entry, and changed the setting from Local to Remote. Afterwards, emails went though just fine.
When her prepaid plan is getting closer to expiring, my recommendation would be to look for a provider that offers free SLL certificates. GoDaddy doesn’t, which is the sole reason I went with a company Joe Workman recommended. All of my domains are still registered with GoDaddy, so all I had to do was change the Name Servers to the new provider, upload my sites (and warehoused documents)…and everything worked perfectly. The sites and the emails (well, I had to create new email addresses with the new host, but that takes about 2 minutes per email address). It truly couldn’t be easier to have the domains registered w/GoDaddy, but host with a different provider…one that cares enough to provide Let’s Encrypt.
Hi Folks:
I’m not sure what all this fuss is about Godaddy: “they do not have an option for 5.6.” The fact of the matter is they do! Simple go to your GoDaddy cPanel and then to the “Software” section, and then click “Select PHP version.” There you will find the option to pick PHP 5.6 as shown in this screen shot. So I’m not sure what the problem is unless I’m missing something here.
Exactly. if you’re a brand new Go Daddy customer I believe they start you off with the new cPanel right off the bat. If you’re an older customer, you might have to call them to upgrade so PHP 5.6 is available to you. That’s what I had to do.
