Open-Source CMS Joomla has recently announced through it’s official and unofficial channels that when Joomla 4.0 is released, it’ll only support PHP 7.0 and upwards.
Rumors about this requirement have been doing the rounds in Joomla circles for a long time now. This choice will benefit both the developers and the site builders. The developers will no longer have to support older PHP versions, while you and your visitors get to experience faster loading speeds and other benefits.
I don’t pretend to know all the magic behind PHP 7, but I can vouch for the speed difference at the very least. The company I work for has migratde all sites to PHP 7 with one or two really old, “we can’t update because we don’t have the budget” sites being the exception.
But I’m not ready!
Now, we know how it works. Some people will have been upset over this decision. Truth be told, there is no saving for those people. At this point, everyone should have been ready for this transition. PHP7 isn’t exactly new or unstable. It has been around for quite a while now.
If you can use PHP7 on your hosting and haven’t made the migration yet, then you have been missing out on speed. Not to mention, you have been needlessly using a version of PHP that is no longer supported. Joomla 3.x works perfectly fine on PHP7 so the ball is in your camp.
If, however, you are in the group of people who can’t use PHP7 because it’s not offered by their hosting company, then you really have a problem. The problem being that your hosting company is way behind the times, and you should start moving all your websites away as soon as you can. Unless your weekend hobby is fixing websites for your clients that got hacked. In which case, it’s fine to keep using older, slower versions of PHP. We aren’t judging. Just pretend you never read this article.
We welcome our new PHP7 overlords
To put this boldly, nobody that has been using Joomla can or should be surprised by this decision. In fact, if you aren’ using PHP7 already you should be pointing fingers at your hosting company and yourself, instead of blaming Joomla for moving away from old, outdated technology.
If you are panicking and looking for a good hosting company, we highly reccomend using Siteground for all your PHP7, high end hosting needs. Works great for WordPress, too. Click here to visit their site (*)
(*) We get a small commision for everyone who signs up. It pays the bills to keep this blog running!