[creativecoding]

So, I've been to this forum many time and have written huge articles only not to post them for whatever reasons. I think this one will be posted.

Anyhow, I just finished a rather small script. It basically creates polls and will give you a link to the poll so you can use it anywhere. Basically, it turned out great. Now I designed a setup for it so that my client won't have to manually modify files. I tested it both on XAMPP (I've been loving that to death) and my server, both worked fine.

Well I turned it in and waited. Now he says that there was an error. He thinks it's because he's using PHP 2 and my requirements are PHP 5.0+ (I didn't actually look through my code, it was just an educated guess).

Well, what do? I want to have a good rating and a happy client but I don't want to have to make the whole thing PHP 2 compliant.

[macosxnerd101]

Ask him to upgrade to PHP 5. Or volunteer to upgrade him yourself.

[modi123_1]

Your wants are a bit immaterial, right? Unless you can convince the client to upgrade to 5.0 or a work around for the error you'll need to do this in 2.0. They are the ones paying you remember!

[creativecoding]

He says he's hosted on Yahoo. shouldn't a larger hosting site like that keep up on PHP?

[modi123_1]

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[Gavisann]

creativecoding, on 16 July 2011 - 12:29 PM, said:

He says he's hosted on Yahoo. shouldn't a larger hosting site like that keep up on PHP?

Some web site hosting companies give you an option for which version of a framework or software you want. For example, when you sign up with GoDaddy, you can pick PHP 4 or 5. It may be just as simple as shooting the hosting company an email asking for the upgrade.

[creativecoding]

An update:

Turns out he actually had PHP 4. In the (crappy) admin panel, I upgraded it to 5. Everything went smoothly except for some reason Yahoo does not allow files that start with a period. This meant changing some files but in the end it all worked out.

Client is happy.

[Martyr2]

Now you learned a few more rules.

1) Always take a look at the resources they have before you start a project. This would have prevented you from coding something in PHP 5.0 if they had 2.0 installed. Assess what they have installed and what they can do and if any upgrades will be needed.

2) Never take everything a client says as fact and, without being rude, try to verify that the problem is indeed what they say. I have had clients tell me that some software I have written didn't work only to find out that it did work but they didn't understand the results. If I had believed them that the software didn't work, I would have actually broken the software in an attempt to "fix" it. Luckily I verified the results and explained to them how it worked and that their interpretation of the output is what was actually wrong.

[no2pencil]

If you want to continue providing freelance work, please take what Martyr2 said here very seriously.

Many times both of those points have burned me, or saved my ass. It depended on if I didn't trust those rules enough to turn them a blind eye.