WordPress installation in Plesk with WP Toolkit fails: PHP Fatal error: Directive ‘magic_quotes_gpc’ is no longer available in PHP in Unknown on line 0

Symptoms

• WordPress installation in Plesk with WP Toolkit fails with the following error message: PHP Fatal error:

  PLESK_ERROR: Directive ‘magic_quotes_gpc’ is no longer available in PHP in Unknown on line 0

• The affected domain has set up a PHP 5.4 handler or higher

Cause

Plesk bug with ID #PPPM-11170, which will be fixed in future product upgrades.

Note: Consider subscribing to this article in order to get notified when the fix is released or check for the ID in our changelog

Resolution

As a workaround disable the magic_quotes_gpc as follows:

Note: In this example, we’re fixing it for PHP 5.3

1. Connect to the server via SSH

2. Perform a backup of the Plesk database as per the instructions here

3. Execute the following query:

   # plesk db “delete from PhpSettingsParameters where name = ‘magic_quotes_gpc’ and id not in (select dom_param.val from dom_param inner join hosting on (hosting.dom_id = dom_param.dom_id) where param = ‘phpSettingsId’ and hosting.php_handler_id = ‘plesk-php53-fastcgi’);”

   Note: This will disable the magic_quotes_gpc directive globally on all existing domains.

4. Recreate all the configuration files the following command:

   # plesk bin php_settings -u

5. In order to avoid this issue to repeat on new domains, add this directive to Tools&Settings > PHP Settings > PHP 5.3 > php.ini

   magic_quotes_gpc = Off

   Note: This must be added into [PHP] section