Upgrading PHP version

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9 posts Page 1 of 1
by equine » Thu Aug 17, 2017 1:39 pm
Got the following message on my Wordpress dashboard: <<<We noticed you are running your site on a PHP version older than 5.4. Please upgrade to a more recent version. This is not only important for running the Ultimate Social Media Plugin, but also for security reasons in general. If you do not know how to do the upgrade, please ask your server team or hosting company to do it for you. You should update your PHP version to either 5.6 or to 7.0 or 7.1.>>>

Just talked to technical support and they said the highest version you'all support is 5.5 and didn't have any projected date on further updates. So do I need to find another host for my 5 websites?
by SonicUser » Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:12 pm
According to the below post, they will be upgrading to 5.6 but have not given a date yet.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4688&p=32970&hilit= ... ade#p32970
by drew.phillips » Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:20 pm
In the mean time, you can upgrade to 5.5 by changing the following in your .htaccess:

Code: Select all

# Change
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php53
# To
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php55
Drew Phillips
Programmer / System Operations, Sonic.net
by equine » Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:22 pm
Thank you Drew, but according to the warning message, I need to upgrade to a minimum of 5.6 in order to have a secure Wordpress site.
by drew.phillips » Thu Aug 17, 2017 4:10 pm
I understand and appreciate your concerns. While PHP 5.5 went end-of-life last year, there are currently no (known) exploits against PHP 5.5.38 itself. If any are discovered in the future that affect our PHP version, they are backported in to our current version. Additionally, we have other security measures in place to prevent attacks against PHP and the servers that power our hosting cluster. Any exploits are likely not going to be due to that specific PHP version. Exploited sites are usually due to code vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins, WordPress itself, other insecure code, or direct access to the WordPress administration panel or hosting account due to a compromised administrator password.

At this time, WordPress is fully compatible with PHP 5.5 and a majority of plugins are as well. Aside from routine scans for malicious files and activity on the hosting platform, we have a number of processes in place to detect and thwart sites exploited due to the reasons above.
Drew Phillips
Programmer / System Operations, Sonic.net
by equine » Thu Aug 17, 2017 4:53 pm
Thanks for your detailed reply, Drew. I feel safer after reading your post and will upgrade. Off topic, I asked for a quote to do the upgrade (I'm not familiar with PHP and would be afraid to break our site) and was told it would take 2-3 days at $65/hr. Does that sound reasonable to anyone?
by drew.phillips » Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:01 pm
It would take literally seconds to make that change to the .htaccess file, and just a few minutes more to make sure your site is still functioning properly. For an unfamiliar 3rd party, it may take them a few minutes to figure out how to log in to your account but generally a web professional can pull this off in less than 30 minutes by reading our Wiki or giving support a quick call.

Hosting is unsupported, meaning it's not something we assist with unless it's to fix issues with your site as a result of problems on our end, but I'd be happy to make that that change to your .htaccess file. It'll take me no more than a few seconds and just a moment longer to ensure it didn't break your site.

What exactly did they say would take 2-3 days in order to complete? That seems a bit fishy. Feel free to send me a private message through this forum if you'd like to continue this discussion privately.
Drew Phillips
Programmer / System Operations, Sonic.net
by equine » Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:29 pm
Sent you a PM Drew.
by mollyf » Mon Dec 02, 2019 4:28 pm
Having done this many times, I can imagine the work taking a couple of days to turn around and a few minutes to do. It might be a "minimum charge" task, where gathering credentials and information to complete and bill for the job take longer than actually doing the work.

I have a client whose WordPress site is hosted at Sonic. Their site's .htaccess file says it's using php 5.6, which is pretty old. What is the directive to update to a 7.x version?
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