PHP is a server-side scripting language that is now used for general use and especially in website development.

A lot of websites these days use PHP, such as any websites using Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal CMSs.

Furthermore, as with any software, app or programming language, it is imperative to keep this up to date, but how do you know which is the latest version? And what are the perks of upgrading?

This guide should help with some basic knowledge of PHP with some great resources you can use to get some more information.

Unsupported PHP versions #

http://php.net/eol.php

The above page lists the ‘end of life’ of each of those versions.

The 'end of life' is essentially when the version in question will no longer be 'supported', meaning that after this date security updates will no longer be rolled out for this version, making it a potential security risk.

Our hosting offers versions 5.6 - 8.0 on most of our servers but we are in the process of removing 5.* versions.

Supported PHP versions #

http://php.net/supported-versions.php

The above page lists all of the currently supported PHP versions.

You can see that some of these are coming close to being unsupported.

Migration between versions #

http://php.net/manual/en/appendices.php

This is one for the developers!

The above page will help knowing the differences between different versions of PHP for migrations, as some website code may need to be altered in order to work with a newer version of PHP.

If you are using a CMS such as Wordpress, you would not have anything to worry about, as long as everything is up to date, but please note, some plugins/themes may not be updated to the newest versions themselves.

What Are The Perks Of Upgrading? #

PHP versions 7.0 and above perform a lot better than any 5.x versions. This is thanks to a brand new zend engine, new features such as improved security and stability, new operator and error handling.

Zend have some good visual representations for this on their website: http://www.zend.com/en/resources/php7_infographic

Just to summarise the differences between the 5.x version from the 7.x versions, here is a list of all the best improved features:

1. Brand new zend engine
2. Twice the speed
3. Facilitates error handling in a much better way
4. New Spaceship (Combined Comparison) and Null Coalescing Operators
5. Facilitates Imports From the Same Namespace
6. Much Cleaner and more streamlined (Deprecated and old functions removed)

Upgrading your PHP version #

We have some guides on how to upgrade your PHP versions on your hosting with us, so it's now time to get upgrading!

Cloud article - https://help.tsohost.com/knowledge-base/article/4396

cPanel article - https://help.tsohost.com/knowledge-base/article/8504