Justfindit.se Magazine

PHP 8.0 and WordPress sites

PHP 8.0 and WordPress sites. Until November everything was fine. Web servers were using PHP 7.3 or 7.4 and not many website owners experienced problems because of PHP. But then we got PHP 8.0. Guess what happened?

During November 2021 many people experienced huge problems with their websites. Mostly those with websites created in WordPress. Why did that happen?

Until November everything was fine. Web servers were using PHP 7.3 or 7.4 and not many website owners experienced problems because of PHP. Suddenly in the beginning of that month something happened. Hundreds and thousands of people saw error messages or white pages. The clear error messages mostly appeared at WordPress sites and they explained everything. Or mostly everything.

Different things were mentioned as explanation in all error messages. For example themes or plugins suddenly got problems with some PHP functions. Also core files were mentioned as defect parts of the websites. But in some cases we could only see message about a critical error.

Why did the problems come with PHP 8.0? Why so many websites were affected? If we had an opportunity to take a look at files belonging any WordPress site with error messages then we could see that file dates were mostly from 2017, 2018, 2019 or even 2020. And as we know, WordPress has new updates almost whole time. If we ignore them in 2 or 3 years we really are in risk zone. It is especially in situations like this when PHP releases a whole new version with different changes.

Not only WordPress but also Joomla and other similar CMS are in same situation. One important thing to know in this situation is that not all programs are up to date as WordPress and not all of them are easy to update when needed.

That is why all website owners who use different CMS must check and take care of all available updates in time if they want to avoid problems like this one. The release of PHP 8.0 made many website users disappointed.