Coppermine 1.6.20 and new PHP versions

[littbarski]

Hello,

I am using 1.6.20 for quite a long time now and - by the way - I am very happy that this great gallery exists.
The web hosting I am using changes from time to time the PHP versions. At the moment it's 8.1, next year 8.2, probably 2026 then 8.3 (I guess).

I am not a tech or internet expert so I usually only change the Coppermine when I have to. So my question is:
a) if php 8.2 or 8.3 will also be possible with Coppermine in its newest version
b) if perhaps those php versions are also still possible with 1.6.20?

(I changed some minutes to 8.2 and it seemed to work but as this was a public online test I changed it back to 8.1)

[406man]

Answering your questions: as PHP 8.2 and 8.3 haven't been released it's impossible to say whether even the latest version of Coppermine will work satisfactorily. Often the developers change PHP behaviour and no longer allow coding that worked in previous versions, causing faults.

I found with my plugin development work that any PHP 8 version could cause problems so I would recommend staying on your current version 8.1 until a while after 8.2 and 8.3 have been released and tested. Also, update your Coppermine gallery to the latest version before changing the version of PHP to something newer.

[littbarski]

thank you very much. I could choose 8.2 in the hosting options and it worked, and I found information that 8.2 and 8.3 have been released. But I am not an expert as mentioned.

My hope was that perhaps since 1.6.20 the main issues for php 8 have been fixed and now huge and new issues appeared. Well after all I am just shy in updating Coppermine, I have to admit .

So my last question here would be: when I update my Coppermine on the hosting server, is this always only the files that I can see in FTP or was any of the last Coppermine updates also doing anything in the database (files)? I think I remember that I once only uploaded new files into my FTP folders, not using an automatic update program.

(I understand if this is offtopic and won't get answers)