PHP Web Development has changed – PHP 5.x is now obsolete (reached End-Of-Life date) and not supported anymore (no security fixes). After the 1st of January 2019, security updates for 5.6 branch won’t be released. Any software and websites that run on old PHP 5.6 software can become hard and expensive for technical support and maintenance, when new security vulnerabilities are revealed, as they won’t be fixed (officially). The tech stuff (system administrators) may need to fix them manually in the source and then recompile, test and deploy – that’s a lot of extra time to spend on server administration and the price would be higher!
Together with PHP 5.6 branch (just few days earlier), PHP 7.0 reached EOL date. It is now also considered obsolete and could become insecure and vulnerable at the time of writing these lines…
If you are using insecure PHP version on your hosting server, it’s recommended to ask your tech support to try to switch to the recommended PHP version below. If the website or web application don’t support PHP 7.x and can’t be easily fixed, you may need to look for a new website or web development agency.
PHP for web development and websites development
As of today (Q1 2019) the most stable and supported PHP version is 7.2. This is the recommended version for hosting servers, which are used for web development and websites development.
Later this year it may be better to switch to PHP 7.3, which should be stable enough and maybe faster!
If you have something to share on this development topic, you can do so in the comments below, thank you!