I made a huge mistake with my website recently. I have been getting alerts from my WordPress installation recently that I need to update my PHP to version 7. My site has been on PHP 5.5 since I moved to WordPress several years ago, but now, it seems, PHP has come a long way, and WordPress is insisting I update it. I assumed that eventually WordPress would require PHP 7, so it would stop working after I updated it one of these times, crippling my website.

Since these alerts started appearing, I have been looking all over my host’s admin panel in search of options for PHP, but was unsuccessful. So I decided to start looking elsewhere, and with Leo Laporte’s constant recommendation to use WordPress.com as a host for WordPress sites, I figured I’d try it out. Well, that little experiment lasted less than a day. I had chosen the “Premium” plan, which is one step up from “Personal”, their lowest paid tier, so I figured it would offer enough of the options I needed. As it turned out, for starters all of the site’s money amounts were in Polish “zloty” values instead of US dollars, so I had to use Google to convert the values to USD so I knew what I was getting into. I looked past that and tried to move on, figuring if that’s the worst issue I have, I’l be fine. Next I found that with the plan I chose I can’t use Plugins. None. Nada. Nothing. And I’m stuck with WordPress branding on my website. Sure, my plan removes all WordPress ADs, but apparently branding isn’t considered an ad. Then there’s the e-mail. I had this crazy notion that ALL HOSTING included e-mail accounts. HA! WordPress.com includes no e-mail whatsoever. They give you instructions on how to setup e-mail with another host–and they even recommend several good ones–but WordPress.com doesn’t have e-mail accounts. Period.

Well, that was the last straw. And stupid me didn’t even go the slow route–I went ahead an transferred my domain to them during this whole process! So now I’m a bit stuck. They say my domain is locked for 60 days, per ICANN, after any transfer, and can’t be moved until after that. Whoops. I e-mailed support at WordPress and asked if there’s any way to unlock it sooner. I saw that the site on my host also have a lock option, but I have the ability to remove that to allow the domain to be transferred. That might not apply for new transfers though, but we’ll see what they say.

So, desperate for another option, I did a web search for how to upgrade PHP on my host’s site, and there it was. There is an option in the “CGI and scripting language support” section in my admin panel with my host that says very simply: “Select the version of PHP that will be run for files with a .php extension” along with a dropdown containing 5 PHP versions from 5.3 to 7.1. I switched to 7.1 immediately and went back to my self-hosted WordPress site’s admin section. Whaddayaknow, the alerts werer gone. Problem solved. Except…

Yup, now I’m a little messed up. My domain name was transferred to WordPress.com and I don’t want it there, I want it back where it was. WordPress.com as a 30-day refund policy, so the first thing I did, once my domain transfer was completed at WordPress.com, was to change the DNS addresses back to MY host, which still hosts my same old site (which is now on PHP 7.1) and cancelled my subscription to WordPress.com. I guess this will allow it to function properly for 60 days until I can transfer it back, but I was in a little bit of a panic for awhile there, wondering if my site might be offline for 60 days, stuck in the ether without a home. Not that it would have been the end of the world for my site… I’m sure I’ve gone over 60 days without a new posting many times over the years. After several days (not a good turnaround time for hosting support) WordPress.com finally responded to my question about unlocking my domain before the 60 days, and I was told that it’s a ICANN requirement (as I already knew) and there’s no way around it–I have to wait the 60 days. So I marked my calendar. My site should be fine though–at least it’s pointing to the right place.

In the end, my site is basically just a glorified “portal” to other sites and a sort of journal where i can practice my writing (and bitching) skills anyway. I don’t advertise anything and I don’t expect anyone to visit besides me. If they do, they’re perfectly welcome, and I’m always aware that everything here is 100% public and I have curated it completely. So, if you’re reading this and you’re not me, WELCOME! You are among very few who stumble into this little corner of the interwebs. Enjoy the posts, check out the photos and videos too…but they’re not actually here, they’re sitting on much more popular sites like Flickr and YouTube…but I made em, that’s my (our) stuff. And this is still one of the last remaining ad-free, popup-free, non-malware-infested websites in cyberspace, and that’s the way I intend to keep it.