As time marches on so does the versions of php and Joomla and it is important to keep up to date.
We recently took on the task of upgrading php to version 5.3 for our websites. Since we host as so many different companies we decided to put this guide together to help others that may need to upgrade PHP at the different hosting companies.
Once you have upgraded be sure to clear any Caches and browse your website to confirm that all pages work correctly and no functionality has been broken.
Site5 PHP Upgrade
Site5 has a pretty easy upgrade to php 5.3 just add this line to the .htaccess file:
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php53 .php
HostGator PHP Upgrade
A possible php5.3 conflict
One one of our Joomla 2.5 sites that also uses JReviews, we were getting 500 errors on the JReviews product review pages.
After working with the Alejandro, the JReviews developer, we learned that a new feature of Joomla 2.5 was conflicting with JReviews. The new feature is the ability to process plugins on custom html modules. All we had to do was turn off this processing of the modules and all worked well.
We are not sure why this new feature was enabled by default, since it is a new feature is probably should have been turned off. Oh well we turned it off and all was well again.
