Common problem, apparently – when you try to run the upgrade, you get a server error stating that your server is running an older version of PHP. Here’s the exact error I received:

Your server is running PHP version 4.4.9 but WordPress 3.2.1 requires at least 5.2.4.

In researching this wording, I learned that possibly editing the .htaccess file might be the fix. But, the exact line of code to place into the .htaccess file seemed to be different for every web host.

So I fired off an email to Blue Gravity, with whom I’ve hosted websites for almost 10 years (most of them on WordPress), not expecting to hear anything since it was, after all, Sunday morning.

Lo and behold, the pro’s at Blue Gravity not only got back to me within 20 minutes, they also steered me to my hosting account dashboard, where I was able to click through a few easy steps to force my websites to run on the needed version of PHP.

So – for anyone else who runs into this error and uses Blue Gravity as their webhost, here are the steps to fix:

1. Go to www.bluegravityhosting.com, click on “Account Manager,” and log in to your hosting account.
2. Scroll down to the “Website Settings” tab, then click “PHP Settings.” You should then see a list of your sites.
3. Click the word “Settings” to the right of the website you wish to update, then scroll down a bit to the “Update PHP Settings” area.
4. From the “PHP Version” drop-down, just select the version you want to run. I picked 5.2.* . Then click the “Update” button to save your change.
5. Repeat for other sites you wish to update.

That’s it! Less than two minutes to fix what I thought was going to be a booger of an issue!

And by the way, if you aren’t using the WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WPAU) plug-in to upgrade your WP version, you should be! This awesome little plug-in has been working flawlessly for me for several years.

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WordPress 3.2.1 upgrade fix for PHP version

It didn’t take long before I found what seems to be a tool for doing just that: it’s called Rollyo, and it allows me to create my own custom search list by entering the URL’s of up to 25 selected blogs. So, I spent a little time creating a few of my own “searchrolls,” and now I can search for occurances of my selected phrase just within the blogs I’ve specified. This tells me if anyone else locally is blogging about the topic I’m covering, and helps me quickly uncover a post I might be able to link back to.

Only two faults I’ve found so far: first, the limit of 25 URL’s. I ought to be able to enter as many URL’s as I want to in a single searchroll. And second, I can only search one of my custom searchrolls at a time. It took me four separate rolls (25 URL’s in each) to enter all my local site links, so I have to do four separate searches. That’s still better than searching the entire Internet for a link to a local blog, but I’d like to be able to check multiple searchrolls with one click.

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Blog tools: search your own blogroll with Rollyo