The authors of the PHP scripting language stopped supporting the PHP 5.3 and PHP 5.4 series some time ago.
Newer versions of PHP are generally more secure, have fewer bugs, and in some cases run far faster. Of course, that’s really just another way of saying that older versions of PHP are insecure, buggy, and slow.
Because of that, we are phasing out PHP versions earlier than 5.5 (we also offer the 5.6 and 7.0 series):
- New customers can no longer choose the old versions.
- We’ll start sending reminders to customers who use the old versions, asking them to upgrade.
We have a page dedicated to explaining how, and why, to update PHP.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.6, 5.6.21 and 5.5.35 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0, 5.6 and 5.5 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.5, 5.6.20 and 5.5.34 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0, 5.6 and 5.5 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.4, 5.6.19 and 5.5.33 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0, 5.6 and 5.5 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.3, 5.6.18 and 5.5.32 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0, 5.6 and 5.5 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
In addition, we’ve added a “patch” to PHP on our systems that will help avoid an issue that can cause WordPress sites to stop working when using poorly-written plugins or themes.
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The PHP developers recently released versions 7.0.2, 5.6.17 and 5.5.31 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.0, 5.6 and 5.5 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
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Some of our customers are still using the PHP 5.3 series, even though it’s obsolete and not recommended.
We’ve “rebuilt” the old PHP 5.3.29 software to patch a serious security bug it contains. This bug is the partial cause of a recent Joomla security problem.
The rebuilt version will be deployed on all our servers within the next few hours. No changes should be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
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The PHP developers recently released version 7.0.1 that fixes several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 7.0 on our servers as a result.
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The authors of the Joomla software announced today that every version of Joomla below 3.4.6 has a critical security bug that allows “hackers” to take over a site.
The bug was in use by hackers for two days before the Joomla authors patched it, and we found several Joomla customer sites that had been modified as a result. We’ve restored backups of those sites and notified those customers directly, but we recommend that all Joomla users change their password to be safe, even if we didn’t notify you of a problem.
The best solution for Joomla users is to update to version 3.4.6 immediately. However, we also added a rule to our servers this morning to block any more attacks until our customers can update. The rule should ensure that if you use our hosting service, and your site hasn’t already been modified, hackers won’t be able to take advantage of this bug.
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:
- Login to our My Account control panel
- Click PHP Settings
- Click PHP 7.0 series
- 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.
