Fatal error: Class ‘ZipArchive’ not found

• sixnine

  said

  This is the error message I see when trying to update from 1.0.3 to 1.1.
  Anybody got a hint how to get in to work?

• jeffw

  said

  Hi, sixnine.

  The error message means that a required module of PHP is not installed on your server. Please contact your web hosts and ask them to install the ZipArchive module. If your host can install the ZipArchive module that would be the best solution, if not we can give you manual instructions for installing the plugins

• webwizards

  said

  I need the manual instructions for now, until I can update my entire cluster to support ZipArchive.

• andy

  said

  @webwizards

  The ZipArchive feature has been a default in the PHP install package for a while now. That’s why it’s on 99% of the sites running our themes. You can tell from the low number of posts here in the forum that it’s not common thing for a PHP install to lack this feature. It’s possible you did not install this when setting up the server. Whatever the reason it should be an easy update, I’ve added it myself and from our past experience with the handful of customers missing the package it was an easy update for them also. Hopefully you can get this taken care of without much trouble.

  Here’s what you need to do if you choose to manually remove the need for this feature. Keep in mind that by doing this you will have to manually update the plugins in the future and theme updates will require additional work.

  1. Open the theme folder “extensions/plugin-installer/plugins” and inside will be the ZIP file for the required plugins: js_composer.zip and revslider.zip

  Save those to your desktop so you can upload them to your WP install.

  2. Copy the file js_composer-custom.php (in the same folder) to “extensions/theme-utilities”

  3. Open the moved file and at the top, just after <?php add this special code:

  /*
      Extension Name: Custom Visual Composer Elements
      Version: 1.0
  */

  4. Delete the folder “extensions/plugin-installer/” from the theme.

  5. Upload the plugin ZIP files from the WP admin “Plugins” area using the standard method of selecting a file. Do this for both of the ZIP files you copied.

  That’s it. Upload the modified theme and you’re all done!

• webwizards

  said

  Ok thanks, it’s just weird that no other theme or plugins I’ve installed before have ever needed ZipArchive to work, I host hundreds of sites on this cluster. It may be an older default PHP build though, these servers have been migrated from hardware to hardware to VPS since 2003, updating PHP along the way, but may have used old defaults.

• webwizards

  said

  It worked great. There’s already an update for the js_composer.zip plugin, but I’ll let it sit until I get the cluster updated, and then upload the unmodified theme so it works better. This will work in the pinch that I’m in to get the theme loaded up to meet the client’s deadline.