With the release of WordPress 7.0, support for PHP 7.3 and below has ended

What’s happened

WordPress 7.0 requires PHP 7.4.0 as the absolute minimum.
The recommended version is PHP 8.3 and above for full performance and security.

If your host is still running PHP 7.3 or lower, your site is automatically locked to WordPress 6.9 (or older).
That means no security patches, no bug fixes, and no feature updates from this point forward.

And that’s a serious problem!

Why it’s happened

WordPress follows industry adoption trends. Once fewer than 5% of all WordPress installs are on an older PHP version, support is retired.

PHP 7.3 and below crossed that threshold a while ago.

Sites left behind on unsupported PHP versions now face; no further security fixes for PHP itself, no compatibility updates from plugins and themes moving to PHP 8, and unpatched vulnerabilities in older PHP code that attackers already know how to exploit.

Tl;DR – staying on an old PHP version will be a big security risk!

What happens if you update now

You could see faster page loads (PHP 8 is at least twice as fast as 7.3), lower server load (the same amount of traffic has less CPU usage), as well as continued updates for WordPress, themes, and plugins.

What happens if you don’t update now

Your site becomes an emergency waiting to happen; block editor breakages, lost content, broken admin panels, and, worst of all, unpatched PHP vulnerabilities that make you liable to automated attacks.

What if you want to update, but can’t

Some sites can’t be updated. Unfortunately, if your site is old, it may be running on legacy code that would take far too long to bring up to date. The reality is that you will need a new website. One that is built on a modern framework.

What’s next

Contact us! We can give you a quote on what it will take to rebuild your website on a modern framework. One that will give you peace of mind. Even if your website is running on 7.4, the cutoff for that is just around the corner, and will be here before you know it. Get ahead of the curve and contact us to see how we can help.