PHP 7 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS – ForceWP

WHEN CAN I UPGRADE TO A PHP 7 ENVIRONMENT ON FORCE WP?

PHP7 is now available for all plans on Force wP. Please read below for important information and instructions on how to get PHP7 at Force WP.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF PHP 7?

Site speed – PHP 7 can handle uncached hits 2-3x faster than on PHP 5.5
Resource efficiency – An upgrade to PHP 7 is estimated to bring 30-50% improvements in memory consumption
Service more concurrent users – PHP 7 can serve up to 3x as many requests per second and handle more traffic with the same number of resources
Return type declarations – You can now specify return type variables with PHP 7
Error handling – Many fatal errors have been replaced with object-oriented exceptions to make it easier to find and address bugs
Long-term support – Lower technical debt with ongoing support of of bug fixes, security patches, and maintenance updates for years to come

*Please note: Actual performance improvements will vary based on your theme, plugins, site load, and cacheability.

WILL WE ALLOW CUSTOMERS TO RUN MULTIPLE PHP VERSIONS CONCURRENTLY?

No, you may only run one version of PHP for your account.

DO YOU SUPPORT PHP 5.6?

Yes! PHP 5.6 is currently the recommended minimum version for WordPress. We are currently in the process of upgrading our customers to this minimum version. New customers will be on a PHP 5.6 environment and customer sites that are not yet compatible with PHP 7 will be defaulted to PHP 5.6.

I’M READY FOR PHP 7. WHAT NEXT?

Before requesting a PHP 7 environment, we recommend using the PHP Compatibility Plugin to check for any potential code, plugin, or theme incompatibilities.
Once you’ve confirmed compatibility and are ready to upgrade to a PHP 7 environment, reach out to Support to initiate the upgrade.