Another evening spent providing tech support to an octogenarian, battling with web problems via Zoom. The first of them, quite baffling, but mostly as a result of the antiquated software he uses to manage that particular site. It brought back memories of supporting SharePoint 2007. No, it wasn’t that bad. After much probing, we settled for a partial fix, which satisfied him, if not me.
The second of them, easily resolved. As for the last of them: once more he was conviced that another of his sites had been hacked. The gentleman in question is a political activist, so has every right to be paranoid, but I advised him that other explanations were just as likely. Let’s not panic, I told him, as I grabbed my own laptop to investigate.
Sure enough, it turned out he was merely the victim of his web host upgrading his scripting language to PHP 7, and thus deprecating the password hash used by his website to connect to its database. Resetting it for him, I updated his config and, hey presto, his website was back online, much to his relief.
I’m honestly glad to help the old man: I can do with all the good deeds I can get. But more than that, it’s nice to observe and listen to myself, and realise that I’m not the complete ignoramus I sometimes think I am. It’s good to realise that I have some value to offer others, from time to time, after all. Even if that’s just oodles of patience.
Last modified: 7 February 2023
