PHP command-line version changing

This post has technical details about a change in the way PHP scripts are run from the command-line shell on our systems. It doesn’t affect PHP scripts run through websites, which is what most of our customers use (for WordPress and so on); nothing is changing about those web-based PHP scripts.

What’s changing?

If you’re a technically advanced user who runs PHP from the command-line shell, you can already specify which PHP version you want to use. This is explained in the Using different versions of PHP on the command line or cron jobs section of our PHP versions page.

Until now, if you didn’t specify a specific version of PHP on the command line (such as /usr/bin/php-7.0), it ran the system’s default version of PHP. And that version may have been different from the version you’ve chosen in our “My Account” control panel for your web scripts — it was effectively a random version that changed from time to time.

Over the next few days, we’re changing that. The version of PHP that will run if you use the generic /usr/bin/php in the shell or a cron job will now be the same version you’ve chosen for your web scripts. (This is what most people expect to happen anyway.)

Just so it’s clear, “use the same version as web scripts” is merely what will happen by default if you don’t use a particular version. You can still specify a different version if you need to; our PHP versions page explains more.

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

Update Jan 25: this process is complete on all servers.