Support

I'm having issues moving a joomla site from a test server to a live server.  When I use Akeeba/Kickstart, it changes the destination (target) PHP version to 5.4

I'm sure I have some settings wrong.  I've attached the test server settings and the target / destination settings for our review as well as the Akeeba log file.

Kickstart is renaming your . htaccess file and you're losing your PHP setting.

You can just create a file with only the ADDHANDLER OR SETHANDLER line in it.  That will restore your PHP version while you're restoring.

I think the latest version of Kickstart does that for you.

What do you mean create a new file?  a new .htaccess file or something else and where do I place it? 

When Kickstart extracts your archive it extracts, then renames your .htaccess file to keep it from interfering in the restore process.  The damage was probably done when the .htaccess file was overwritten.  Unless your development site is on the same host, the ADDHANDLER or SETHANDLER line may be gone.  If that's the case, just set the PHP version from cPanel again and it will come back.

You want to continue your restore with only that one line in your .htaccess file.  The only .htaccess file that you need to worry about in this case is in the root of your site.   So if you need to create one, do it in the root of the site.

So when you say "You want to continue your restore with only that one line in your .htaccess file.  The only .htaccess file that you need to worry about in this case is in the root of your site.   So if you need to create one, do it in the root of the site."    You are suggesting that after the restore, and it sets it to PHP 5.4, I THEN modify the existing OR create a new .htaccess file int he root directory with only the ADDHANDLER line in there, correct?

Also I did try to just go to cpanel and set it to PHP 7.3 after restore, but when I looked at the front end I got errors.

We need an .htaccess file with only the ADDHANDLER line during the restore process.  Some of the security features in a normal .htaccess file will prevent the restore from completing.  Normally, we rename the .htaccess file so it isn't there at all but that doesn't work in your environment because it is needed to set the PHP version.

Once the restore process is complete, the cleanup step is supposed to rename your restored .htaccess file and make it active again.  Your site may very well have problems running with the one line .htaccess file.  

You have two distinctly different activities here, restore and normal operations.  The needs in the .htaccess file are different for each of those activities.

I'm sorry but this is a little confusing.  If I understand the process I should use is as follows:

1.)  Original test site:  Use Akeeba backup to backup the site resulting in XXX.jpa file

2.)  In the live site target / destination root file directory under public_html, place the single line .htaccess file with the ADDHANDLER line in it

3.)  Copy the XXX.jpa Akeeba backup file along with kickstart.php to the public_html root directory (so at this point there are 3 files, .htaccess file, XXX.jpa and kickstart.php

4.)  Run the recovery process with kickstart.php (domain.com/kickstart.php

This will recover the site in the destination/target directory.

Once the restore process is complete, the cleanup step will rename your restored .htaccess file (from the backup .jpa file) and make it active again.  Hopefully all will be correct and the site will now be running PHP 7.3 as it should.

Do I have that correct?

Almost.

Kickstart is just the jpa/zip extractor.  When the extraction is complete, Kickstart calls the restore script (ANGIE), which is embedded in your backup archive.  So these are two separate steps.

We're going to move step 2 to step 5, so it happens after the extraction.

Step 6 will be to either continue the restore process from the prompt that Kickstart provides or just visit your site's URL and you will be redirected into the restore script.