Moodle page not working

Moodle page not working

by Jason M -
Number of replies: 8

Hi -  We use Moodle for our company's Support Centre as a learning resource for our customers to view tutorials on features of our software.

However, for the past week (and possible longer), our page Moodle page stopped working. Now, it's a blank white page, can't log in, etc. 

More details...

- support.clienttrack.ca/moodle
- Moodle version -> 2.7.3+ (Build: 20141128)
- haven't updated Moodle since 2014
- host Moodle database on Hostgator
- using Windows 10

I'm hoping someone can help me as it's critical to have our Moodle page working for our customers. If you need more information, let me know.

- Jason


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In reply to Jason M

Re: Moodle page not working

by Leon Stringer -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

If you have access to add files to the Moodle site's source code folder (document root) add a file called phpinfo.php containing two lines:

<?php
phpinfo();

Then access that file in your browser, i.e. http://support.clienttrack.ca/moodle/phpinfo.php to show which PHP version the server is running.

Moodle 2.7.x only supported up to PHP 5.6 (support end-of-life December 2018) and I'm wondering if HostGator have removed this PHP version from their servers.

Similarly Moodle 2.7.x's support end-of-life was May 2017.

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In reply to Leon Stringer

Re: Moodle page not working

by Jason M -
Hi Leon - Thank you. I did as you mentioned - it's running PHP Version 7.4.14.

Would I need to update to newest version of Moodle? If yes, does it mean starting from scratch? (i.e. creating tutorial pages)
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In reply to Jason M

Re: Moodle page not working

by Leon Stringer -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

You would need to be running a version of Moodle that supports PHP 7.4, either 3.8, 3.9 or 3.10.

Upgrading: to get from Moodle 2.7 to one of the above versions you'll need to a) upgrade to Moodle 3.1, then b) upgrade to Moodle 3.5, and then c) upgrade to the target version. But those intermediate versions – 3.1 and 3.5 – also require an old PHP version, 7.0. So what you could do is set up a VM with PHP 7.0, copy the site source code, Moodledata (course and user files), and database to the VM, then perform the upgrade to Moodle 3.5 on this. Then copy these items back to the host to upgrade to the target version.

Starting from scratch: This is an option if you can afford to you lose all your data.

I recommend Moodle 3.9 as the target version as this is the current long-term support release, supported for longer than 3.8 and 3.10.

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In reply to Jason M

Re: Moodle page not working

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
Have you talked to Hostgator? My guess is that they did something on their server that affected your Moodle.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Moodle page not working

by Jason M -
Hi Rick - Not yet but will. I was checking to see Moodle first thinking maybe I needed to update to new version.

I noticed that when I go to support.clienttrack.ca, the images folder is there but no html files for the tutorial pages. Not sure if that means they are gone from server or would they be in a sub folder within Moodle folder?
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In reply to Jason M

Re: Moodle page not working

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
That "moodle" folder might have something in it, but perhaps you do not have the "rights" to see its contents. It appears that you don't have an SSL running, which you should think about.

Moodle 2.7.3 is pretty old. I am not sure if you have a "hosted" server. If so, you probably won't be able to run the latest version of Moodle on it. But Hostgator should be able to guide you (a little.)
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In reply to Jason M

Re: Moodle page not working

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
The question is, what stopped Moodle. Something must have happened. The most common cause in the case of old Moodle releases is that the hosting provider has updated a software component Moodle depends on, typically PHP and/or MySQL/MariaDB. Ref. http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases and ask your provider.

A final point: I don't truly believe that a renoved hosting provider runs web servers on Windows 10.
wink
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle page not working

by Jason M -
Thank you to all 3 of you for helping out. Going to pass all this information along to my co-worker and get this sorted out.
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