PHP 7.0.0 and 5.6.16

The PHP developers recently released PHP version 7.0.0, as well as an update to the 5.6 series, version 5.6.16. We’ve upgraded PHP on our servers as a result.

The official release of PHP 7 means we’ll start encouraging customers to use it (as long as they use modern scripts like current versions of WordPress). It’s almost twice as fast as old versions of PHP. Yes, really: Twice as fast. We’re using it ourselves on this blog.

If you’d like your WordPress or other PHP-based site to seem snappier, or be able to handle twice as many visitors per second, you can easily do so:

  1. Login to our My Account control panel
  2. Click PHP Settings
  3. Click PHP 7.0 series
  4. Click Save Settings

Then test your site to make sure it works properly. If it does: Great, you’ve just made your site much faster! If it doesn’t, it’s probably because you’re using older scripts that haven’t yet been updated, and you can simply set PHP back to an earlier version for now. We recommend that you always use the latest version that works properly with your scripts.

As always, if you have any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.