Nov 24 2006
Back From The Brink
Its nice to use a hosting service that keeps its customers informed. Yesterday, just as I was about to leave work I noticed that my blog was offline. I hunted high and low last night but could I find the problem? Could I hell!
I’ve finally found the solution. It seems that my hosting company silently upgraded both the PHP4 and PHP5 (although I only found a notice about the PHP5 upgrade. Else where on teh intawebs I found the the latest version of PHP5 has got short PHP tag disabled, therefor <? ... ?> is not allowed, instead you have to use the long format <? ... ?>.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with using the long format, infact I prefer it. However, my hosting company (in its infinite wisdom) has decided to not show errors in the browser, instead I have to go to my hosting control panel, and the errors that are logged by PHP is simply:
PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in [filename] on line 6
Why, oh why, can’t the error be something like “PHP Parse error: short tags disabled”. That would have caused a lot less frustration on my part and for everyone that reads my blog. Now I have to go through the rest of my site and try to find where else short tag have been used for PHP…. argghhhh!!!!
