PHP 8 Upgrade

The PHP 8 Upgrade is required because PHP 7.4 End of Life is fast approaching as the PHP version will stop receiving any security updates from November 28, 2022.

PHP is the coding language used to write WordPress – i.e., it is the engine that runs your WordPress site

At this time (November 6, 2022), over 60% of all websites written in PHP still use the final version of the PHP 7 release branch, this is particularly huge for the whole internet community, especially WordPress, which powers 40% of all websites worldwide.

Moving your website to PHP 8 is of paramount importance. Staying on PHP 7.4 past EOL (End Of Life (programmers love acronyms!)) introduces major security risks and can increase the risk of your site being hacked.

Unfortunately, updating your WordPress website to PHP 8 can result in a loss of functionality or cause fatal errors that will bring your website down. This happens due to running outdated code containing functions no longer supported by the PHP 8 release branch.

To reduce downtime and avoid your live site going down, We will do the update for $99. We will follow the five steps below to update your WordPress website to PHP 8.

1. Create a Staging Environment
   We will log into your existing WordPress admin and use BlogVault to take a copy of your site to a remote staging server.
2. Update this staging Environment to WordPress 6.1 and PHP 8
   As part of this process, we will update your active theme and plugins if updates are available
3. Test All Areas of Your WordPress Website
   If your site is quite modern and uses Themes and Plugins that are well-supported, we should not see any issues. If we see issues, we will record and report all errors received. Depending on what we find, we will investigate / action possible fixes or recommend which plugins/themes need to be deactivated.
   Please note: If fixing/mitigating these errors takes more than 1 hour, we will report back with an estimate of actions/time needed to keep your website functioning properly with PHP 8
4. Staging Site Upgrade Approval
   Once the staging site runs without visible issues, we will send a link for you to review and approve.
5. Update the Live Hosting environment to PHP8
   Using knowledge and experience gained on the staging site, we will repeat the process on the live site. Your PHP 8 Upgrade will be complete with minimal downtime.
   

$99
WordPress Website PHP 8 Upgrade.

Safely and with minimal downtime.

PHP 8 offers numerous improvements to WordPress PHP development, which results in a better quality of code and more efficient code processing.

Staying on PHP 7.4 past its end of life will lead to degraded performance and expose your WordPress website to major security risks and result in additional costs and lost opportunities.