Embracing the Future: Why the WordPress 6.3 Shift from PHP 5 to PHP 7 Matters for Web Development

WordPress, one of the most popular website building platforms, is officially dropping support for PHP 5 in the upcoming 6.3 release, which is expected on August 8. The minimum supported version of WordPress was PHP 5.6.20 as of 2019, but this will be updated to 7.0.0 in the next release. The recommended PHP version will remain the same – 7.4+.

This is an important update as PHP is the primary programming language that WordPress runs on. Outdated versions of PHP can pose security risks and degrade the performance of websites. Therefore, web developers and website owners should pay attention to this and update their PHP versions to 7.0.0 or higher.

Sites that remain on PHP 5.6 will not be able to upgrade beyond WordPress 6.2, but they will still receive security updates. Moving to 7.0.0 will bring many benefits to the WordPress ecosystem, including themes and plugins, significantly reduced memory usage for upgraded sites, and better security and improvements to core tools.

It’s important to note that WordPress support for PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 is rated as “very good” and nearly 26% of WordPress users are already using PHP 8.0+ sites.

At our agency, we are always on the lookout for the latest updates and are ready to help you upgrade your site to the latest versions of WordPress and PHP to maximize performance and security.