500 Error on upgrade - Manager folder

ModX newbie. I've built a few Joomla and Wordpress sites in the past and a friend asked me to help her with a ModX site for which the original developer is long since gone.

The site is 1.0.6 Evo (AFAICT) and has stopped working. Googling the error, it seems likely the webhost has upgraded PHP, and even if it isn't that then a 5 year old piece of software is probably due for a refresh.

I followed the alternate instructions at https://docs.modx.com/evolution/1.0/administration/upgrading and have a new (1.2.1) and old backup of the files as well as a copy of the database all stored locally.

I uploaded and renamed everything and suddenly had a 500 error on loading the page, the manager and the installer. Tried putting the assets, manager and index.php back as they were and everything was back (old site still broken, but not a 500 error). I could get to the installer page. Tried putting the new ones back one at a time and narrowed it down to the manager folder triggering the problem.

I copied the ht.access file from the old manager to the new one, but still no joy.

Any other ideas?

Have you tried installing a frsh copy of Evo on the server ?

I upgrade / update by deleting everything from the server - upload the new version (the original zip) and upack it on the server directly.

Upload the old config.inc.php and the start the install

Once the install works I then upload images, CSS etc. that are required for the site.

In theory, that should work without any problems.

Must have overread this:

I uploaded and renamed everything

What have you re-named ?

Not being totally au fait with ModX, I thought that sounded more drawn out and involved than the alternate upgrade but I'm uploading as we speak.

The instructions said to put in the manager and assets folders, and the index.php file as manager-new, assets-new, etc.

Then copy the existing ones as manager-old, assets-old, etc. Then swap the -new ones back in their places.

Quick one:

Backup server + DB
Delete the server contents - completely
Upload the new zip
Extract zip
upload a copy of the config.inc.php to manager/includes
install in update / upgrade mode
once finished upload your required files - CSS etc.
upload custom snippets
login - clear cache - view front end

Simple

Note:

If you experience errors, you might have to change the config file to use MYSQL, as of 1.2.x Evo uses MYSQLi as MYSQL is deprecated

Also, if you have custom code and or outdated snippets / plugions etc. that code needs to be updated where needed to use MYSQLi

Brilliant - have the homepage back. The links all give me a Not Found [CFN #0005] but I'm getting closer!

Edit: In the manager it still says v.1.0.6, though the interface is definitely different, as is the login page :-/ [ed. note: mwclarkson last edited this post 7 years ago.]

By the sounds of things your website uses FURLs (Friendly URLs)

If you are getting the 404s on all links take a look in the root, if you have an "ht.access" file, it needs to be changed to ".htaccess" - for the rewrite rules to be activated

But what is strange is the number not changing, did you delete everything from the server and start with a clean slate, or did you just overwrite the files ?

Bum, my second edit didn't go through properly. I tried to add that the version number not changing was because I skipped through the form on first login to the manager (it looked like - and in fact, was - the settings page, but I had to click through and approve the developer email, etc. before the version number changed.

Still getting errors, but haven't fiddled since my last post. Will try the htaccess change, though they're not 404s exactly. I've also managed to lock myself out of the admin account and don't (currently) have access to the webhost (I've been doing everything through SSH and SCP) so I can't fiddle with the database to reset the lock until the owner gets back to me.

Nearly there though!