Upgrading from PHP 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 or 7.3

Where these versions stand

PHP 7.0 stopped getting security fixes on 10 Jan 2019. PHP 7.1 stopped getting security fixes on 1 Dec 2019. PHP 7.2 stopped getting security fixes on 30 Nov 2020. PHP 7.3 stopped getting security fixes on 6 Dec 2021.

Moving up to PHP 7.4 does not solve the problem either: it stopped getting security fixes on 28 Nov 2022. The table on this page shows which versions get security fixes today and until when.

The warnings PHP 7 gave, and what PHP 8 removed

Code that runs on PHP 7 is closer to modern PHP than code from the PHP 5 days, so the work is often smaller. Most of it involves features PHP 7 marked as going away (these warnings are called deprecations) that PHP 8 then removed:

• Two older shortcuts for building small functions and looping through lists (create_function and each), flagged in PHP 7.2 and removed in PHP 8
• Code written in the PHP 4 style (a setup function with the same name as its class), flagged in PHP 7.0 and ignored by PHP 8, so objects quietly miss their setup
• Reading one letter of text with curly brackets ($str{0}), flagged in PHP 7.4
• Old functions for handling “magic quotes”, an early and long abandoned form protection (get_magic_quotes_gpc), flagged in PHP 7.4 and removed in PHP 8
• Chains of either/or shortcuts written without brackets (nested ternaries), flagged in PHP 7.4

If your site’s error log is full of “Deprecated” lines today, those are usually the first things that break on PHP 8.

Plugins and themes come first

On WordPress and similar sites, most of the fixes come from updating plugins, themes and the core software to versions written for modern PHP. Many sites on PHP 7 have updates waiting that were never applied, often because someone worried an update might break something.

We apply those updates in a sensible order on a private staging copy of your site, check what changed, and fix or replace anything that has no update. Premium plugins with expired licences cannot update from the dashboard, so we tell you if a renewal is needed.

Testing before anything goes live

We switch the copy to a currently supported PHP version, turn on error logging and work through every error and warning. Then we test what matters to your business: contact forms and the emails they send, logins, search, image uploads, the admin area and checkout if you have one. Your live site is only switched once that works and you have approved it.

PHP versions and their support dates

Bug fixes come first; after that a version gets security fixes only, then nothing at all.

Dates from php.net. Your host may offer only some of these versions.