PHP 7.0.20 and 7.1.6

The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.20 and 7.1.6 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0 and 7.1 series on our servers as a result.

These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.

A new feature to help troubleshoot connections to slow external servers

We’ve also added a custom “patch” to our copies of PHP 7.0 and 7.1 that provides a new feature: logging of slow outgoing connections from your scripts.

This can show the cause when a WordPress or Joomla site suddenly becomes slow or unresponsive for no obvious reason. The culprit is often an add-on plugin or component that contacts a third-party server to do its work, but “hangs” when the third-party server doesn’t respond.

Our page about logging slow external connections has more information.