As PHP 5.5 reached its end of life yesterday, July 10th 2016, today we are finally ready to announce the end of support for PHP 5.4, starting with Gantry 5.5.0 release which will likely happen later this year. At the time of this post, Gantry latest release is 5.3.1, which will give you plenty of time to upgrade your systems accordingly.
Once PHP 5.4 support gets dropped, our new minimum required version will become PHP 5.5.9.
Also notice that with Gantry 5.3.1 we have now introduced a permanent warning at the top of the admin page that will appear in case you run PHP 5.4.
When PHP reaches the EOL (end of life), the PHP team stops supporting that version. This means not only there won't be any more new features or bug fixes, but also that no security issues will be addressed, leaving your sites vulnerable.
If you use Gantry, you are also using a CMS that depends on PHP and security issues should be taken seriously. For this reason we strongly advise to upgrade PHP to the latest 5.6 or later versions, as soon as possible.
Although we will still support PHP 5.5 for some time, please keep in mind that it has already entered the EOL and it is to be considered an unmaintained version of PHP. Keep up to date with the latest PHP version, 5.6 (or 7.x if your other extensions support it)
What happens to your site if you don't upgrade?
Even though we will be dropping support of PHP 5.4, it does not mean that once Gantry reaches 5.5.0 your site will stop working. Up until that moment, we will continue to ensure that Gantry works with PHP 5.4. However, after Gantry 5.5.0, we will be stopping testing on PHP 5.4 and we will not address any issue that comes with it.
Although this might seem like a long time before it happens, please note that this is a call for you to upgrade today. Both PHP 5.4 and 5.5 have already reached EOL, upgrading your site now is for your best interest.
How to change PHP version
Most hosting providers offer simple ways of changing PHP version that won't take more than a few minutes to accomplish.
Below is a list of the most commonly used, in no particular order, pointing to the process of changing PHP version with them. If your hosting provider is not listed, search through their support pages or open a ticket with them.
Worth knowing facts
We did run a little test with Helium and PHP 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 7.0, these are the results
| PHP Version | Load Speed |
|---|---|
| 5.4.45 | 418ms |
| 5.5.9 | 51ms |
| 5.6.23 | 51ms |
| 7.0.7 | 30ms |
Goes without saying that by upgrading PHP you will also gain a 9x boost in speed for your site, without doing anything but upgrading.