When I open my WordPress site, I saw below message on the Dashboard. Initially I do not understand what exactly it is, and the way to fix this. After reading the issue, carefully; I understood that, the issue is because of the old version of PHP running on my server.
PHP Update Required
Warning: PHP Update Required
WordPress has detected that your site is running on an insecure version of PHP.
What is PHP and how does it affect my site?
PHP is the programming language we use to build and maintain WordPress. Newer versions of PHP are both faster and more secure, so updating will have a positive effect on your site’s performance.
The issue seems to be simple and by updating the PHP to newer version will solve it. But, when your blog using more Extensions; you need to be bit cautious before you update the PHP to newer version.
Step 1. Ensure your WordPress extensions are supporting newer version of PHP. If your extensions are not supporting, you can uninstall them and install the similar extensions which supports the newer version of PHP; to not to loose the features provided by the extensions.
You have to continue to verify this with all the Extensions (it is better to check the inactive extensions too). This job will become easy, when you use the Plugin to verify the compatibility check.
Step 2. Once the check is done, you need to update the PHP version in your server to point to use the latest and stable version of PHP. If you are using cPanel, it will be very easy.
Login into your website’s cPanel and select “PHP Selector”, which allows you to select the version of PHP to be used for your website. Once the selection done, click on Update button to update the selection.
Now, you re-login into your website and observe that, you won’t see “PHP Update Required” message on your WordPress Dashboard.
🙂 Sahida