I'm sorry about the update to PHP8 broke your site. It's a fairly straightforward process to update PHP scripts to be compatible with PHP8:
1) check the error_log for PHP messages
2) fix the script by updating php syntax as needed, upload the fixed script
3) repeat as needed.
Some common fatal errors come from former built-in functions that are now removed:
split() was replaced with explode()
each() was removed so constructs like:
while (list($key, $val) = each($array)) {
are replaced with
foreach ($array as $key => $val) {
Also any 'shortcodes' like:
<? are replaced with <?php
<?= are replaced with <?php print
depending on your PHP settings, you may get Notice: errata testing undefined variables and fatal errors trying to do arithmetic on strings .. sloppy coding was 'forgiven' in older PHP.. modern PHP (rightly) gripes if the operator types don't match the operands.
You didn't say what exactly broke on your website. Since you seem to be running VWS, perhaps some old scripts need to be updated?
PHP 5.3 has been off support for over 10 years and is not safe to stay with .. I do urge you to take the plunge to get supported PHP on your website.
BTW, the mesomap.php script for the NEWN was deprecated 4 years ago and replaced with the mesonet-map set of scripts. The buoy-data script was updated to work with PHP 8.
These scripts may need updates:
/grlevel3/democrop.php
/owa/log.php
/owa/blank.php
/L2K/wxl2k.php
/L2K/L2K.png
atom-advisory.php (newer version available at
https://saratoga-weather.org/atom-advisory.php?sce=view)
I don't see other .php being loaded by your home page that would be broken by a PHP update.