I’ve always tried to make it easy to update core scripts with the Saratoga templates.
The check-fetch-times.php?show=versions on your site will show what needs to be updated with the core scripts, and a recommendation for how to update it … most are just ‘replace old with new’ as they aren’t usually modified in your instance and use configurations set in the Settings.php/Settings-weather.php. Some scripts may require you copy the settings area from the old script into the new script and they’ll be noted as such on the versions display (and contained in the update .zip as a readme file).
For non-core scripts (third-party addons), like Scott’s alternative dashboard, you’ll need to be a bit more careful in the replacement, but using the latest version .zip as the source is needed.
Your issue with bottom-half disappearing is caused by an old version of the alternative dashboard (and also an old version of cloud-base.php) that had moon-phase tables that ran to the end of November, 2023. The replacement versions have tables until the end of 2030, so you have to use the replacement scripts to get the rest of your page back.
Also, over time, hosters update PHP versions and some built-in functions used by older scripts have disappeared from PHP and can result in additional fatal errors due to those missing functions.
See Saratoga-Weather.org - Website Templates - AJAX/PHP - Maintaining your website for more discussion (at the page bottom) on how the Template script maintenance should be done.
I hope this helps…