Pulse 5.4.0 on IONOS Server under PHP 8 generates many warnings and errors

Hello, everyone. Completely desperate, I've been operating with a Pulse 5.4.0 for two days now. Version around because I assumed this version to be ready for PHP 8.0 (I think I read this from an administrator).
I have a customer page (Pulse 5.2) at IONOS Germany. IONOS recently forced the PHP version to be changed to 8. An earlier version is only available against a expensive support.
After the transition, there were some notices of obsolete code and bugs. So I sort of rebuilt the site with a clean, fresh Pulse 5.4.0 - I just left the content and template.
Everything runs perfectly on my local test environment mamp-pro 5 with php8 on Windows 10. BUT ... everything is uploaded to IONOS, the page is again full of references and errors to outdated PHP. The admin area doesn't work anymore.
For testing, I put an original Pulse 5.4.0 in a subdirectory and got the same warnings.

You can't hand it over to the customer like that, can you?

I would also have liked to simply switch off the error output via php, but I didn't succeed in that either.

After hours of searching, I found a solution to replace the = [ ] with = null in the file in question. That goes so far, but it can't be a real solution, can it? Unfortunately, the admin area still does not work.



Does anyone of you have a better idea for me?

I'm not a programmer, just a designer.
Have I really bought a program for a lot of money, the latest version of which is outdated? PHP 8 has been around for quite a while...

Many thanks for your help
Annett

Note: I am not a paying customer of PulsCMS, but I have been following PulseCMS since the early days.

This error comes from the fact that PHP8 now requires that required parameters come before the optional ones.

Reading the documentation, it looks like you (or the devs) would need to reorder the arguments in the function, as well as any other place that calls the function.

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Hello and thank you for replying.
Yes, that's what I found out too. I've also tried changing the order but of course this produces blank pages or fatal errors. So it has to be done by the Pulse developers.
It is annoying that PHP 8 has been around for a long time. The developers could have done it long ago. Now I HAD to switch to PHP 8 and can't really use the latest version of Pulse.
So I'm asking this clever forum here if anyone has a good solution.

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You would also need to change the order of the arguments wherever the function is called.

What I would suggest is using global search and find where dispatch() is called, and then change the order of the arguments there. I know it's a pain, and I do hope that the devs get back to you.

I also found this link, you could possibly get an idea on how to at least hide the error here.
https://php.watch/versions/8.0/deprecate-required-param-after-optional

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Oh wow, that's funny! :laughing: This is exactly the page that I found and after which I tried the changes.
At the moment I can access the live page (kinderland-ringleben.de) with these changes, and I've also got the backend up and running again.
The problem with changing the order of arguments is that it produces blank pages and errors - this was my first try. Presumably because the tags are assembled in that order.
I proceeded a bit by trial and error, so that I no longer know exactly where I changed something - it's not nice in any case and I wished for a professional solution. In the end I don't really know if everything still works as it should after my changes... :woman_shrugging:

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Just to add, the site that you shared has an infinite redirect loop and I can't view it on Firefox.

Glad you got it sorted out though, and i hope that the devs can get back to you on a proper solution. :slight_smile:

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Yes, that's right. I'm going crazy... :hot_face: after logging out of the backend, the frontend doesn't work anymore. It's driving me insane... I'm in the process of reverting all my edits backwards to the original.

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updated:
Should someone also be confronted with this problem, at least here is the way to hide the hints. They are not gone, just no longer visible.
The variants that do NOT work:

  1. Rearranging the order of arguments produces blank pages
  2. Replacing the [ ] with 0 (zero) means that the cookies for the backend do not work - so I first find an error message about the cookies in the backend and then an empty page - at least on my customer site.
    So neither is a solution!

After a long trial and error I then under Pulsecore autoload_classmap.php with an error_reporting(0); provided at the beginning. This is how it works now without any error messages.
grafik
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any help from the owners, really a shame.

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Finally, a word to Pulse owners:

I've been using Pulse since 2012, back then it was Mark and Ulli. Support has always been okay and development fast. I also discussed some improvements with Michael.
But there has been a standstill for a very long time. I paid a lot of money for no progress.
In order to regain the trust (at least mine) and users, the owners should consider the following:

  1. Free update PHP 8 for the latest version 5.4.0,
  2. Significantly reduce the price to a maximum of USD 150 per year, do not allow a subscription and pay via PayPal or bank transfer,
  3. happy to detach the shop and use it as a purchase plugin (in Germany/Europe this cannot be used legally anyway),
  4. reliable support,
  5. regular updates with a working update button

Thanks
Annett

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Thank you Anett for opening this conversation. I have created ten Pulse websites for customers of mine, websites that will certainly soon no longer run when other hosters turn off PHP 7.x.

And thanks again for your tip of error hiding. Maybe I have to fall back on it.
But wait a minute: what do we actually pay PULSE for?

To the PULSE developers: Finally do something for the money!

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This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

Tests were conducted with PHP8. We didn't notice some strict settings that would cause issues.. IONOS has these, and we are working to fix this. In the mean time, you can try Pulse Core (free for most) if your license is expired and you're looking to try the latest version of PulseCMS: Pulse Core (free for most) Beta Released 🏁

The next version will aim to deal with the issues you have.

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Please see the latest version, Pulse6 which was ran on a PHP8 linter. It might be a better fit for PHP8. Pulse 6: Early Beta Released, including Pulse Core :checkered_flag: