How to use PHP 7 With WordPress. Php 7 is one of the best and reliable versions of PHP. Using PHP 7 with WordPress will help you to speed up your website performance and security.
PHP is one of the best coding languages for starting a website and WordPress is also written in PHP. PHP comes with a lot of customizable options and you can create almost any type of website using it. Since the inception of PHP, It comes with various versions and the latest version of PHP is 7.2
Today most of the websites are powered by PHP 5.6 and some of are using PHP 7.0. In this post, I will show you how to use PHP 7 with WordPress. I will show you some easy steps to move your WordPress site to PHP 7 without any issue. So, let’s get started:
An Introduction to PHP 7
Before I am going to tell you everything about how to use PHP 7 with WordPress, Some of you might unaware of PHP 7. For those here is a short introduction to PHP 7
PHP 7 is a PHP engine that was launched in December 2016 and carries a plethora of new features, performance improvements, and security enhancements. Unlike its previous version PHP 7 comes with lots of improvements. PHP 7 comes with great security options and it also speeds up your site.
How to Use PHP 7 with WordPress?
Well when it comes to our WordPress security and performance, PHP 7 did its job very well. Before we proceed to use PHP 7 for our WordPress, there are certain things you have to keep in your mind. Till now you are using WordPress on PHP 5.2 to 5.6, before moving to PHP 7, make sure that your WordPress is compatible with it. It consists of your themes and plugins.
To check your WordPress compatibility with PHP 7 you have to install the PHP Compatibility Checker: A plugin that scans your WordPress codebase and active theme plugins looking for known compatibility issues. Just install it on your blog and select the PHP version to PHP 7.0 to check the result.
You will get the detail report of your WordPress themes and plugins that are compatible with PHP 7. If everything is ok then you are ready to use PHP 7 with your WordPress site.
However, there are certain requirements for this plugin to scan your plugins and themes like:
- The plugin cannot detect runtime compatibility issues since it doesn’t execute any of the existing themes and plugins.
- It relies on WP-Cron to scan files in the background.
- Occasionally, false positives are reported since the plugin cannot detect unused code paths that may be used for backward compatibility.
If you have some compatibility issues with your WordPress than it is better to not to move to PHP 7.
Setting Up Things in cPanel.
Now go to your Cpanel. You can usually do it by typing yourdomain.com/cpanel. When you log in to your Cpanel account, under the software menu select the option “select PHP version” here you can select the PHP version to 7 and set as current.
Visit your site to check any further issues. If you find any problem, you can immediately revert back to the earlier version of PHP (usually to PHP 5.6)
Note: – If you are not using Cpanel hosting than you can contact your hosting provider and ask them to enable the PHP for your blog.
Today WPEngine provides you only PHP 7 Web hosting. So, if you are planning to start your blog or want to move your blog, you can go with them.
If you are using Siteground hosting and using their SG optimizer plugin than with it you can check your blog compatibility with PHP 7 and easily change the version of your PHP.
Summing up the things for you
Let’s quickly recap all that we have learned so far:
- PHP powers almost 86% of the internet, powering sites such as Facebook and WordPress.
- The recommended minimum version of PHP is 5.6.
- PHP 7 has significant improvements in terms of performance, security, and features — it easily increases your WordPress’ performance by 2x with zero additional hardware.
- Switching WordPress to PHP 7 brings a lot of benefits without any investment.
- However, before switching, you need to ensure your WordPress setup is ready to be upgraded to PHP 7 using the PHP Compatibility Checker
- Web hosting companies like Hostgator, Inmotionhosting, Namecheap etc. supports PHP 7. But you have to activate it manually.
- Managed WordPress hosts such as WPEngine have rock-solid compatibility with PHP 7.
PHP is continuing to improve with every release. If you’re using WordPress along with only the popular plugins, you could gain a lot by upgrading to PHP 7. Its drastically improves your WordPress blog ’s performance.
Over to you
After reading all of the benefits of using PHP 7 with WordPress, there is no reason that you did not use it with your WordPress? For the sake of your site’s performance and security, it is advisable to always update yourself with the latest technology. I highly recommended that you must use PHP 7 with your WordPress blog.
If you have any doubts or question, feel free to ask me by dropping a comment below. Like the post, share it with your friends.
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