WordPress Toolkit and PHP 8.0: not just yet
PHP 8.0 is out and we are all keen to upgrade our WordPress hosting to it. WordPress itself is already largely compatible, but things are not so simple for the ecosystem as a whole. Here is why.
The "WordPress Toolkit" that HaiSoft includes with its Plesk hosting makes life easier for WordPress site owners by automating many tasks that would otherwise be tedious. It also lets you manage some essential WordPress settings without having to log in to the sites' admin area.
The WP Toolkit relies on a WordPress component to work: wp-cli.
On the other hand, with each new major release of PHP, we are reaching a point where some PHP features can no longer be made to work across both PHP 5 and PHP 8.
This means that making wp-cli compatible with PHP 8 will require dropping support for versions older than PHP 7.
However, many websites around the world still run very outdated versions of PHP, such as PHP 5.4 or 5.6, which makes this a difficult decision for the wp-cli developers.
As a reminder, the oldest PHP version still receiving security support is PHP 7.3, and HaiSoft encourages its customers to upgrade their hosting to recent PHP versions as regularly as possible. This improves performance, compatibility, scalability and, above all, security. To keep your site compatible with recent PHP versions, all you need to do is regularly update your WordPress installation, including plugins and themes.
On this topic, see: Unique, tailored WordPress support
You can check the lifecycle of PHP versions at any time on this page:
https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
The wp-cli developers are therefore watching how WordPress webmasters behave before deciding to break compatibility for users of very outdated PHP versions. It may be necessary to raise their awareness and encourage them to upgrade before making such significant changes.
For now, our tests with the WP Toolkit and PHP 8.0 show a few blocking bugs during installation – which can only be done under PHP 7 – but the toolkit then appears to work perfectly under PHP 8.0. However, as support is not official, we do not yet recommend using PHP 8.0 with WordPress if you want to use the WordPress Toolkit.
We therefore recommend staying on PHP 7.4 for your WordPress sites for the time being; as a reminder, it will be supported until November 2021.
Beyond that, this is only speculation, but PHP 8.0 is very likely to be supported by the WP Toolkit by then, as it will be the version recommended by PHP. PHP 8.1 should follow soon after and be supported straight away by the WP Toolkit.
Source: the original post on this subject by Andrey Kugaevskiy of the Plesk team.
1. Full PHP 8 support requires wp-cli v2.5 (released just recently, on May 19th).
2. wp-cli v2.5 requires at least PHP 5.6.
3. There are still tens of thousands of WordPress sites using PHP 5.4 and 5.5 under WordPress Toolkit management (that’s more than sites using PHP 8, BTW). Before making them all unmanageable via WordPress Toolkit, we need to analyze the trend of PHP versions usage first. We are considering updating wp-cli in WordPress Toolkit v5.6 (next major version), but this decision will depend on PHP usage data.
PS. I understand that this might be frustrating, but please be considerate to people who’re stuck with outdated PHP versions. Some of them have inherited legacy sites that do not work on newer PHP versions, and it might be very difficult to update these sites because it might require rewriting a lot of custom plugin/theme code.
Andrey Kugaevskiy – Plesk Team – on Plesk Online Community
