(Note: I honestly don't know if I picked the right place for this thread. I tried my best, and I'm sorry if I put it in the wrong spot.)
Okay, so my best friend and I have been using Chevereto v3 as a means of hosting a personal image gallery. It's a very small site, and we can't justify the costs of things like a VPS, cPanel, etc. so we run it on Dreamhost. So far, we've not really had any problems with that, but Dreamhost is about to force migration to php8 and I have no clue how to handle this. That's where I'm hoping others might be able to assist.
I've got a few questions, and hope that others might have insight.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide answers or insight for any of these questions.
Okay, so my best friend and I have been using Chevereto v3 as a means of hosting a personal image gallery. It's a very small site, and we can't justify the costs of things like a VPS, cPanel, etc. so we run it on Dreamhost. So far, we've not really had any problems with that, but Dreamhost is about to force migration to php8 and I have no clue how to handle this. That's where I'm hoping others might be able to assist.
I've got a few questions, and hope that others might have insight.
- Can you upgrade from v3.18.0 to v4? We never went above v3.18 because the ability to upload via URL is critical to our use case and v3.20 didn't have that ability as an option when we installed it on a test instance. Obviously, it's not as big a deal if we're updating in the process of migrating to v4, but I wanted to know if that extra step is needed.
- Does v4 allow uploading from URL? This is, as mentioned, a vital feature for our workflow. I vaguely recall something about how it would be added back in v4, but I don't remember if it was speculation and between the awful slow internet I'm using right now and my general incompetence with figuring out search terms, I'm not finding anything on whether this feature's available in v4 now.
- What entails backing up an installation? Specifically, does anyone know what all I need to make sure I back up? I once tried to do a database backup on Dreamhost for a Chevereto installation, and we had to start over from scratch after installing the backup. Some weird things got corrupted, like the ability to upload files (kind of a big deal) and we never did figure out how or why so we had to just start over. Thus, I'm not sure if we didn't back up the right thing and I'd prefer to have an idiot's guide to backup (especially via Dreamhost) if at all possible.
- Is v3 in any way compatible with php8? From what I understand, it's not likely to be. But what I mainly need to know is how screwed are we when the forced migration happens? Neither myself nor the other person I run the gallery with are able to do any upgrade procedures in time for the php version migration due to some life circumstances that have cropped up. I myself am indefinitely trapped on worthless 1Mbps internet; for my own sanity, I won't even consider dealing with installations until that's fixed.
- Do you need to use a specific v4 version to upgrade from v3? I saw a thread which mentioned using v4.0.5 for upgrades due to some kind of installation error happening with v4.0.6. The bug thread about it says this was fixed in v4.0.7. This is probably a dumb question, but for the sake of not messing anything up, I feel a need to clarify. Does that mean it's now safe to use v4.0.7 (or newer, if we end up having to wait until after another version is released before upgrading) for the sake of upgrading from v3?
- How to swap licenses? I have both a v3 and v4 license, separately. How do I go about getting the Chevereto installation to use the v4 license after upgrading? (I did not purchase the license through the 'upgrade at a discount' method. It was part of a promotion due to having purchased v3 very close to v4's release.)
- Do customizations to the v3 install matter? Basically, due to stress and other factors, I've unlearned how to customize Chevereto. I don't remember what all was altered, but I know I'd put in some customizations in several spots to make it look and behave as wanted. Will this be a problem, or does upgrading overwrite all the core files to default? I don't care about preserving the customizations since I don't even remember what they are; I'm just worried about them potentially breaking things.
- Does v4 even work on Dreamhost shared hosting? It's something that I'll want to test when I actually have functional internet who-knows-when, but I'm curious if anyone else has managed to use v4 on Dreamhost's shared hosting plan and if it's working out alright for you. We haven't had any problems with running v3, but v3 is so much more user-friendly for clueless people like us, just judging by the documentation etc. and I feel way out of my depth with v4 so I can't even begin to guess if it'll work.
- Can v4 be used to upgrade v3 that's installed into a subfolder? Our v3 installation is in a subfolder and we need it to remain that way. Will that be a problem? This thread I found suggests it might, and that's a huge thing since we can't exactly do a subdomain workaround; it's already on a subdomain, with the image gallery (Chevereto) being housed in a subdirectory there. Other things are in place at the main level of that subdomain, and all the links we've ever made to images and albums etc. are of course dependent upon things remaining the same. Very worried about that, and would like clarification on the matter.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide answers or insight for any of these questions.
