In the near future, all versions of PHP 5, including PHP 5.4, PHP 5.5 and PHP 5.6 will be removed from free hosting.
What will happen
Some time in the near future, PHP 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 will be removed from the available PHP versions on free hosting. When that happens, all sites currently using any PHP 5 version will be automatically moved to PHP 7.4 or later.
When will this happen
PHP 5 will be removed from all free hosting servers in the next few months.
You should take action as soon as possible to prevent unexpected interruptions to your website.
Why are we doing this
The newest version of PHP 5.6 has not received any official updates since December 2018. For PHP 5.5 and 5.4, this is even longer ago.
Since then, various security vulnerabilities have been identified in PHP 5, and we have had to disable various core PHP functions to mitigate these vulnerabilities.
Almost all scripts that are still being maintained have been updated to support PHP 7 since it came out in 2015. Any script that has not been updated six and a half years later is most likely abandoned.
To keep all sites on our servers safe (not just the sites running PHP 5, but also other sites on the servers that may be affected by vulnerabilities), we have chosen to end support for these outdated PHP versions and the scripts that rely on it.
What should you do
The first thing you should do is to verify that all your sites are running on PHP 7.4. To do this, login to the control panel, go to Select PHP Version and check the selected PHP version for every domain name.
If you find any sites not running on PHP 7.4, you can try switching them to PHP 7.4. If you are using an up to date, popular CMS, most likely it will work without any problems.
If you do experience issues, you should check if the script you’re using has updates available that support PHP 7. If so, you should upgrade your site to the latest version of the software to make it work with PHP 7.
If your software cannot be updated to PHP 7, that means the software is most likely abandoned by the author(s). If so, you should migrate to different software that is still being developed to make sure that your website works and will keep working with current and future system updates.
What can I do if I want to keep using PHP 5
If for some reason you really can’t or won’t upgrade to PHP 7, know that older versions of PHP will remain available on premium hosting. Premium hosting comes with HardenedPHP, that makes it possible to provide older PHP versions in a safe way. Premium hosting supports most minor versions of PHP 5, and even PHP 4.4 if required.
