Upgrading to PHP 7 is confusing

WordPress Questions
1

I’m trying to follow those instructions: How to Check and Update Your WordPress PHP Version (2023). I wanted to test my website first to make sure everything is working correctly. However, the instructions is so confusing and some parts need more instructions.

I’ve noticed that when I upload “Plugins”, “Themes”, and “Uploads”, the plugin “Display PHP Version” still display php 7. I also notice that when I upload “Uploads”, the images didn’t appear in Media in wordpress dashboard. Why is this?

Finally, when I upload “Database”, I got several warnings:

Backup of: http://test.idssite.com (version: 4.9.4)
Warnings:

This backup set is from a different site - this is not a restoration, but a migration. You need the Migrator add-on in order to make this work.
You can search and replace your database (for migrating a website to a new location/URL) with the Migrator add-on - follow this link for more information
The database server that this WordPress site is running on doesn’t support the collation (utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci) used in the database which you are trying to import. You can choose another suitable collation instead and continue with the restoration (at your own risk).

The instructions didn’t mention those warnings. All it said was, “Click the Restore button next to it, and you’re in business.”

Also, when I went ahead with restoring database, it overwrote the local database and changed the php version from 7 to 5.

What should I do to gather the media images, pages, menus, without overwriting the local database and changing php version? Do I have to start all over again from scratch or is there any solution?

2

Hi @kikibres,

Those errors and instructions look like they pertain to UpdraftPlus.

The blog post is fantastic, but for your situation, I would recommend the following:

In place of step #1: Use Duplicator instead of UpdraftPlus. It will create a single zip archive that you can drag-and-drop straight into Local.

In place of step #2: Drag-and-drop the resulting zip created by Duplicator onto Local’s Dock icon (macOS) or main window to initiate an import. When importing you’ll have the option to select your desired environment settings.

3

I tried the Duplicator. However, I was having problem with making a package in Duplicator due to large file size… :frowning: Is there any other plugin that is better?

4

Hey @kikibres –

If you are unable to make a backup of the whole site, then maybe you can download the individual parts. So the database, the media, the plug-ins and themes – and then zip them up on your local machine.

You’ll want to have the database sql file be at the same level as the wp-content folder before you zip it up. So something like this:

database.sql
wp-content
├── plugins
├── themes
└── uploads

Once those are inplace, you can select those and compress them into one zip file. Drag-and-drop the zip file over Local, and it should import it from the archive.