cPanel in it’s wisdom was updating our htaccess file changing “ea-php52” package to “ea-php56”.

cpanel forums confirms the modification is part of a regular update to users code.

In our case, all it did was break our website causing 500 server errors.

Yes, we can access cpanel/file manager/public_html/.htaccess

then change the package back.. but, it means the website has been down until these changes were made.

.htaccess FIX

Deny cPanel access to .htaccess

Prevent Easyapache . htaccess File Modification

• Login to WHM.
• Navigate to “Server Configuration”.
• Go to “Tweak settings”.
• Select the option “System”.
• Set “Depth to recurse for . htaccess checks” to 0.
• Click the button ‘Save’.

# php — BEGIN cPanel-generated handler, do not edit
# Set the “ea-php52” package as the default “PHP” programming language.
<IfModule mime_module>
AddHandler application/x-httpd-ea-php52 .php .php5 .phtml
</IfModule>
# php — END cPanel-generated handler, do not edit