After a couple months trying to convince people involved in the development of WordPress core to drop versions of PHP which, frankly, are not just old but haven’t seen updates in years, and thus are extremely unsafe, my and others’ efforts seem to have paid off!
I just received an e-mail on the ticket we were talking about it and, to my delight, PHP 7.2 will be the new minimum for wordpress starting on version 6.6! This isn’t exactly what I thought ideal, considering that PHP 8.0 and up are the only versions being supported by the PHP Dev team but it’s a start, and will definitely allow the project to evolve and improve a lot in the long term.
WordPress 6.6
WordPress 6.6, scheduled to be released in July 2024, will drop support for PHP versions 7.0 and 7.1. The new minimum supported PHP version will be 7.2.24, and the recommended version remains at 7.4 or higher.
This change is based on data showing a decrease in the use of PHP 7.0 and 7.1. According to WordPress’s monitoring, the combined usage of these versions has fallen to just 2.45% of all WordPress installations as of April 2024. Historically, the WordPress maintainers have used a 5% usage threshold as the point at which support for a PHP version is considered for removal. Since the usage of these versions is well below this threshold, the decision to increase the minimum supported PHP version has been made.
The benefits of this change are expected to be long-term and multifaceted, impacting the plugin and theme ecosystems, the perception of the WordPress project, developer relations, and the WordPress codebase and its development tools over time. While WordPress core is compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1 with some exceptions, support for PHP 8.2 and 8.3 is currently in beta stages, having been introduced in WordPress 6.4.
For websites that are still using PHP 7.0 or 7.1, updating to wordpress 6.6 won’t be possible but you will continue to receive security updates as it does currently. Their policy is to support WordPress versions 4.1 and higher.
There are no set plans to increase the minimum supported PHP version on a regular schedule, however. The WordPress core team plans to continue to track the usage of PHP versions and work with the hosting team to encourage both users and hosting companies to update their PHP versions as quickly as possible. The 5% usage threshold will remain the benchmark for the foreseeable future.
Statistics
As of April 2024, the PHP usage statistics on wordpress looks like this:
- PHP 8.3: 1.20%
- PHP 8.2: 12.07%
- PHP 8.1: 16.34%
- PHP 8.0: 12.25%
- PHP 7.4: 42.80%
- PHP 7.3: 4.79%
- PHP 7.2: 3.80%
- PHP 7.1: 0.95% – Being Dropped
- PHP 7.0: 1.50% – Being Dropped
Users are encouraged to check their hosting providers and upgrade their PHP versions to stay secure and take advantage of the latest features WordPress has to offer.
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg plugin, a mostly hated plugin by majority of the community, has its own dedicated team and a different release schedule from the WordPress core and supports the two most recent versions of WordPress. The Gutenberg team is also expected to increase the minimum supported PHP version to 7.2 in alignment with WordPress 6.6.
This means that, even for people staying in 6.5, to have access to this plugin in the near future, your website will be required to be running on PHP 7.2 and above.
Source: WordPress Core
