Yoast SEO 4.5 was released today with a handful of improvements and most notably a great incentive for users who need to upgrade to PHP 7.
« In Yoast SEO 4.5, we urge owners of sites whose sites run on servers with an older version of PHP to update PHP to a newer version, "Says Joost de Valk. " To move forward on the web, we must take a stand against old, slow and dangerous software. »
The minimum PHP requirement on WordPress is still at 5.2.4, six years after PHP 5.2 ended its life in 2011. This version is now vulnerable to numerous security issues. The statistics Current usage figures show that 5,4% of WordPress sites use version 5.2 of PHP. As this likely represents millions of users, WordPress's core leadership is reluctant to meet the minimum requirements. Only 8% of sites on PHP 7+, since the companiesaccommodation gradually add this new version.
« Because the hosts are not doing the PHP upgrade, we decided to start asking for this since the plugin Jost de Valk says. He argues that the WordPress ecosystem is losing good developers because the project is moving too slowly. He also mentions the case of safety and speed.
« WordPress is sometimes slow, but it should not be at all, "Said Valk. " If it is running on older versions of PHP, however, it is most definitely slow. PHP 5.2 is over 100% slower than PHP 5.6, and 400% slower than PHP 7 ».
De Valk decided to encourage users to use Yoast SEO, which he estimates at 6,5 million active installations, in order to push web hosts to upgrade their clients to PHP 7. The latest version of the plugin displays a notice to administrators of WordPress sites that are running PHP version 5.2, urging them to upgrade to PHP 7. The notice is " big, ugly, and not revocable Said de Valk. It is generated by an error which resolves automatically when the user corrects their version of PHP.
“The notice will also encourage people to contact their web hosts if they don't know how to upgrade their version of PHP,” Valk said. “Yes, it could be painful for some web host. This advice is deliberately intended to make them work ”.
De Valk has stated that the plugin will start showing notices for PHP 5.2 and will add this for the version of PHP 5,6 as soon as it is no longer supported. Through the experience of its customers, de Valk has found that outdated, slower versions of PHP are damaging to the reputation of Yoast SEO and WordPress, as they are only optimized for PHP 5.2. While older versions do not preclude new features, it is difficult for the team to clean up the code and adapt it to these older versions.
“There aren't a lot of features that I can't build right now, but the quality of the code suffers because we can't use namespaces, short array notation, etc.,” says de Valk.
The Yoast SEO team created " WHIP », A WordPress package to push users to upgrade their software versions and open source for plugin and theme developers that they can add to their own software. The project includes a filter for the link to the WordPress.org home page, which includes a selection of hosts that offer PHP 7.
Most major companiesaccommodation already have documentation for upgrading PHP versions. Ultimately, it is the users who will have the power to get more from the companies.accommodation. De Valk said he doesn't know what the impact will be, but encourages users to vote with their wallets by letting hosts who aren't willing help them with the PHP upgrade.
« It could be quite possible that your host is not ready to work with you, "Said Valk. " If so, consider changingweb host. A host provides the engine for your site, so it's best to use a well-functioning engine ».
And you ? What version of PHP are you using? If you need assistance with the migration, you can contact us.
