XF 1.5 Upgrading XF 1.5 to 2.2.8, also moving to a new host with PHP>7.2

[Treat]

Got a double for you. I'm upgrading a XF1.5 to the latest 2.2.8. I'm also moving hosts. Their PHP is higher than XF 1.5 can handle so I'm getting Uncaught ErrorException: array_key_exists() errors.

Is there a workaround here? Pretty sure I cannot downgrade my php install at my host site.

 

[Paul B]

If you are able to upgrade immediately, you can migrate the site, upload the XF2 files and run the upgrade.

Otherwise if the PHP version on the old host is high enough, you can upgrade to XF2 then migrate.

 

[FTL]

If you really get stuck where the PHP versions won't meet in the middle, you can temporarily host it on AWS where you can set it up any way you like, with any version of PHP or anything else that you like, upgrade XF and then move to your preferred host. It will be quite a bit of work though.

Personally, this is my first website and when I researched the hosting options I settled on AWS first time because of the sheer flexibility and security and haven't looked back. Also, if you choose your VPS carefully, you can get a free one for a year with t2.micro. It's a bit low spec though, one core and 1GB RAM, but it works fine for my basic needs.

 

[Treat]

Thank you both. I used Brogan's method. I created a virtual machine, installed the LAMP stack, imported my data and performed an upgrade that way. Then, exported it and imported it to the new host.