5.1.0 breaks admin section with 500 errors

[alfalfa31]

ABT Version:

5.1.0

PHP Version:

7.1

Theme:

WordPress 5.0.3 running Famita Child (1.0) theme feeding Famita 1.3.
also WordPress 5.0.3 running Newspaper Version: 9.2.2.

Plugin List:
Add From Server
Akismet
Classic Editor
Contact Form 7
Envato Market
FAQ WD
Jetpack
kk Star Ratings
Loginizer
MailChimp for WordPress
mb.miniAudioPlayer
NextScripts: SNAP Pro Upgrade Helper
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
PDF Embedder
Printful Integration for WooCommerce
Slider Revolution
Sunny
URL Shortener
Visual Composer - Post Accordion
WooCommerce
WooCommerce Blocks
WooCommerce Services
WordPress Importer
WP-Polls
WPBakery Page Builder

Expected behavior:

Log in to the backend and see the dashboard

Actual behavior:

500 error

The PHP version for the sites in question is PHP 7.1 and in each case, the only plugin which causes the problem is this one. I have combed through the logs but there's nothing useful that I can see. Suffice it to say, the 5.1.0 version breaks the admin side of the site. The client-facing side seems to be fine.

Console messages:

// Paste messages here

<no JS output>

_________________

500 error logs pertinent to this issue

81.171.97.164 - - [30/Jan/2019:11:35:05 -0500] "GET /wp-admin/ HTTP/1.1" 500 0 "https://cbdand.co/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fcbdand.co%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.81 Safari/537.36"

[cwbullet]

I am having the same issue:

Common plugins:
Akismet
Classic Editor
Contact Form 7
Envato Market
Jetpack
Visual Composer - Post Accordion

I disabled and deleted it but now I cannot activate it.

[dsifford]

Looks like it has something to do with how I attempt to salvage user "custom CSS" by turfing it into the customizer.

I'm just gonna delete that and users who have custom CSS will just have to rewrite it. Not worth the effort to debug.

[cwbullet]

Did you ever remove it? The error is still there.

[cwbullet]

Removed it and tried to reinstall and I get "
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{', expecting identifier (T_STRING) in /home/xxxxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/academic-bloggers-toolkit/academic-bloggers-toolkit.php on line 29"

[alfalfa31]

You could try deleting the plugin and reinstalling it.

[dsifford]

@cwbullet I am willing to bet you aren't running PHP version >= 7.0. If that's the case, which I'm nearly certain it is, your solution is to upgrade your server's PHP. Any version < 7.0 is no longer maintained even by PHP itself, which means that just having your server run is a gigantic security risk.

Because I work on this plugin in my spare time and make zero money for my efforts, I have no interest in supporting old outdated versions of PHP.

[cwbullet]

Thank, that worked. My server was saying PHP 7.2, but it was only 5.6. Thank you very much.

[dsifford]

Awesome. Glad to hear it!