A major security hole has been found in versions of PHP before 5.4.18 that allow man in the middle attacks and we need to upgrade to prevent those issues. Going from PHP 5.3 to 5.4 is a big upgrade and will break some older scripts. Unfortunately because of the severity of the issue we don’t have the amount of time we normally like to give before doing the upgrades.
For shared servers we will start the upgrades with weekend of October 5th. We will contact you about the specific server your site is on as the date gets closer.
Will My Site Be Affected?
We can’t scan every site and let you know if it’s compatible with PHP 5.4. If you use a CMS or other script, you can check the developer site or ask on their forums. If you use Joomla, you need to be running 2.5. If you are running Joomla 1.5 your site will not work after the upgrade. WordPress has supported PHP 5.4 for over a year. To get up to the newest version just go to Dashboard > Updates and you can upgrade there. Any third party extensions may have their own requirements, but if the last release has been within the last year, chances are it will work.
If you need to migrate from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5, the instructions can be found on their docs site. If you don’t want to do the migration yourself, our professional services team can get you a quote. Just open a ticket with your Joomla admin login details, including your .htpasswd login if you have enabled that protection, and we’ll get you a quote. While we will do everything possible to help everyone, our professional services does have limited time, and it will be done on a first-come, first-served basis.
If you use custom code you’ve built yourself or paid someone else to develop, you can use our post on how to test for PHP 5.3 compatibility by setting up a server on your computer. Just be sure you’re using PHP 5.4 with the software instead.
What If I Have a Dedicated Server?
If you have a dedicated server, VPS, or cloud server with server management, just open a ticket and we will schedule a time to do the upgrade for you. If you don’t have management and you have cPanel, you can use EasyApache to do the upgrade. Just log in to WHM as root and look for EasyApache in the left menu.
