Upgrade PHP to PHP7

PHP is a popular server-side scripting language language, suited to all kinds of application development due to its flexibility. Lot of versions of PHP ( such as PHP1, PHP2, PHP3, PHP4, PHP5, PHP6, PHP7 and PHP7.xx) have come in the last 20 years. Out these versions, PHP5 has been in use for the past 13 years, it was developed by the new Zend Engine and released in 2004. This version included lots of new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension, and numerous performance enhancements. In 2008, PHP 5 became a stable version under development. Later on more extension versions of PHP5 were added. PHP5.5 made the 64-bit x86-64 builds available for Microsoft Windows.

From 2014 to 2015, many PHP versions were developed. The numbering of the version to be released involved some debate. While the PHP 6 Unicode experiment had never been released, several articles and book titles referenced the PHP 6 name, which created some confusion among some developers regarding the new version release at that time. After voting, the name PHP 7 was chosen. PHP7 was a next generation version of PHP with advance features. It was authored by Dmitry Stogov, Xinchen Hui and Nikita Popov. PHP7 aimed to optimize PHP performance by refactoring the Zend Engine while retaining near-complete language compatibility. As of 14 July 2014, WordPress-based benchmarks, which served as the main benchmark suite for the PHP next-generation project showed an almost 100% increase in performance with PHP7. PHP7 improved compiling complex data structure which resulted in improved performance of applications. Because of the significant changes in PHP7, the Zend Engine was reworked too and is called Zend Engine 3.

Major versions of PHP are allowed to break backward-compatibility of code and therefore PHP 7 presented an opportunity for other improvements beyond PHP. In particular, it involved following changes:

PHP has been constantly being updated and patched for bugs and security vulnerabilities. New PHP versions fix vulnerabilities and optimize the processing and distribution of your website content.

Upgrade PHP to PHP7

It is to be noted that PHP5 and PHP5.x versions security support was officially disabled on December 31, 2018.

This will leave websites using PHP 5 exposed to unpublished security vulnerabilities. If your website is developed on a PHP based content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, then your site needs to be upgraded to the latest PHP.

The last thing you want is a hacked site that exposes all your data publicly. Hackers can also add content to your web page, mine your crypto-currency, add hidden adult material links, or inject malware among other nefarious activities. Apart from bad user experience, it will directly impact top and bottom line for the company. Google may permanently ban your site from search engines too.

At Website Pandas, we are always concerned with the security and performance of the websites we develop or manage. If you are not sure about the current PHP version of your website, we can check the security vulnerabilities of current PHP version of your site and determine if you need to upgrade your website to the latest version of PHP. With hundreds of applications delivered in PHP, our experienced developers and project managers are highly skilled in PHP and can ensure smooth and timely migration of your application to the latest version of PHP.

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