In response to the recent PHP vulnerability issue, I spent some time here in this blog site to upgrade my WordPress theme, plugins, WordPress installation itself, and finally, the PHP version.
One minor issue was encountered after upgrading plugins — Head, Footer and Page Injection plugin began showing parts of some code that I inserted, as plain text in my blog site!! I noticed that the plugin had a notice stating that “php is not allowed in your code (disabled by your theme or a plugin)”. The fix that worked was to head over to the plugin’s settings page (Settings -> Head and Footer) and then go to the ‘Advanced’ tab, and then toggle on the setting labeled as “Enable PHP execution”.
The PHP version I was using was quite outdated T_T and so upgrading to version 8.0 broke my blog site with the error “there has been a critical error on this website.” Fortunately, the thing that I deactivated first was the exact cause of error: my old, outdated theme! It was “Sparkling” theme, which I hadn’t touched for years. I changed into the Twenty Twenty-Five theme for a fresh look and updated WP code. Thank you, Colorlib for the Sparkling theme — it served me well for several years!
I feel good after taking the time to update this site. I’ve had this for over a decade now.