Meteotemplate 19.0 Cranberry

Hi guys,

finally a new version is here. The main purpose of this update is to make the template compatible with the latest version of PHP, which is crucial to many users. The most recent PHP version 8.x is nowadays a standard and more and more providers only provide this PHP version. Unfortunately, the previous versions of Meteotemplate are completely non-functional under PHP 8.X.

PHP 8 introduced many changes – I should rather say many inconsistencies that had been present in PHP right from the beginning were finally fixed. On one hand this is good, you do not want a programming language that is inconsistent and unclear. On the other hand, this caused a headache to many programmers because we have created our previous script this in mind and these scripts were not incompatible and non-functional.

Although you will not see many “obvious” changes in this update, there are a lot, in fact more than in all the previous three updates together (over 200 changes in dozens of scripts). They are changes under the hood and they should make the template functional under the most recent PHP versions again. Please keep in mind that blocks and plugins are separate entities and thus need to be updated separately. I will try to gradually update these in the future, but first the template must be updated as such.

Also, this website (meteotemplate.com) is now secured, using the https protocol, which was also an issue previously because it caused some issues with updating stuff for users that used https.

This update also fixes one major security vulnerability so I highly recommend you update to the most recent version to prevent its misuse.

Update process

As I promised, the update process is semi-automated, just like last time. This means you will have to download the update file manually, upload it via FTP, but the actual update will then be performed automatically by a single script. Make sure you follow the instructions below closely.

If you run in to problems during the update, please let me know as soon as possible so that I can see if this is a problem with your website or a general issue which would have to be fixed as soon as possible.

Please use the new token request page and do not email me directly. The process of token issuing is now also semi-automated (issuing hundreds of tokens last time took many hours and this will make it a lot simpler for me). If you just email me I will not be able to generate the token easily. In addition please include everything that you are asked to specify on the token request page and have a look and agree with the license (nothing new, just a summary from the original license in the wiki, highlighting the major points, but please read it because after some incidents in the past I will not issue tokens to users who do not respect it).

1. as always, you will need a download token for the update. To get one, go to the Downloads page and click Get Token. I will try to issue tokens within 24 hours maximum. I might send a few at the beginning and then wait just to make sure that if there is some major problem it affects as few people as possible.
2. extract the package and inside you will find a folder update_19.0
3. use an FTP client to transfer update_19.0 into your update folder in the template
4. go to your website and login as admin
5. now you will do the actual update by opening the following page (making sure the update_19.0 folder is in the update folder):….templateRoot/update/update_19.0/updateTemplate.php
6. this script will first check several things (make sure it is placed in correct location, make sure you are using version 18.0 and check you are logged in as admin).
7. it will update and add all the new files from version 19.0 automatically and inform you about any potential problems during the update and what to do next.
8. Please make sure you read the entire page, at the end of the update page will be summary information about any potential files that were not updated (in which case you will need to transfer them via FTP as usual) and what to do next.

This update does not require any additional setup of something on your end except do not forget to go to Main setup and click Save after the update process, just to complete the setup (this checks the update process and updates the version number in the footer).

Enjoy!