4.3 PHP 7+ required?

[All Astronauts]

As stated. Just curious if you are making the move with 4.3 or not or keepin on keeping on with PHP 5x support.

[Tom S.]

35 minutes ago, All Astronauts said:

As stated. Just curious if you are making the move with 4.3 or not or keepin on keeping on with PHP 5x support.

No chance of that. Not even close.

Case closed.

[All Astronauts]

Just because other websites are using 5x doesn't mean anything about IPS moving on to requiring 7x.

[Tom S.]

8 minutes ago, All Astronauts said:

Just because other websites are using 5x doesn't mean anything about IPS moving on to requiring 7x.

Fine, case not closed  Maybe a staff member needs to weight in.

I don't understand how you've come to that conclusion, though. Unless you believe IPS have the "let's shoot ourselves in the foot and see how far we can get" objective.

A lot of those websites are running version 5 (5.6 to be precise) because that's what the web hosts have their servers configured to. So, if IPS "require" version 7, that will put some customers between a rock and a hard place. Or, simply to go to a different software provider. PHP 5 is scheduled to receive security updates until 31 Dec 2018. Meaning hosts have no major intensive to upgrade their systems before then.

It takes time, like with old Internet Explorer versions, for them to fade away. The purpose of that graph was to show you that it's still early days for phasing out version 5. But wouldn't hurt to get an official statement I suppose.

 

[DesignzShop]

The answer is here, and pretty obvious.. Security has a bit to go for 5.6. Really 7.1 should be the next step. 5.6 and 7  have about the same shelf life.

http://php.net/supported-versions.php

[Rhett]

We normally support php versions as long as they are supported by PHP (Security fixes only stage). http://php.net/supported-versions.php 

With that said, we have about a year before php 5.6 is dead. (jan 2019)

 

 

[All Astronauts]

A lot of us would prefer you rip the bandage off and move along to 7 but alas not to be...

[Rhett]

1 minute ago, All Astronauts said:

A lot of us would prefer you rip the bandage off and move along to 7 but alas not to be...

We support 7 and 7.1, can you clarify your request? 

[All Astronauts]

Nothing specific other than tighter/better coding imposed on ourselves (willingly), no longer having to explain that 7 is a massive performance boost to IPS users who really (really) need to move along from their server situations, and so on...

Mostly an innocuous query for clarity triggered by the impending GA release of 7.2 in a couple of days. 

[bfarber]

If we change our minimum requirements, we will be sure to let everyone know. At this time, PHP 5.6 and above is supported.

[RevengeFNF]

On 24/11/2017 at 6:37 PM, Tom S. said:

No chance of that. Not even close.

Case closed.

And? If the software you use requires PHP 7, you just need to update it.

Version 5 have that high percentage because most scripts out there does not support PHP 7 yet, which in reality is very bad. That's not the case with IPS.

On 24/11/2017 at 9:59 PM, Tom S. said:

A lot of those websites are running version 5 (5.6 to be precise) because that's what the web hosts have their servers configured to. So, if IPS "require" version 7, that will put some customers between a rock and a hard place. Or, simply to go to a different software provider. PHP 5 is scheduled to receive security updates until 31 Dec 2018. Meaning hosts have no major intensive to upgrade their systems before then.

I don't want to believe that in 2019, there will be Web Providers only supporting a PHP version that is EOL. If that's the case, run... run from that Web Provider, because they are amateurs.

[Tom S.]

Just now, RevengeFNF said:

And? If the software you use requires PHP 7, you just need to update it.

Version 5 have that high percentage because most scripts out there does not support PHP 7 yet, which in reality is very bad. That's not the case with IPS.

I feel like you just completely counter argued yourself there...

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to update their servers php version. And, what if you want to use two different sowftwares together. One requiring php 7 and one not compatible yet with php 7.

Yes, php 7 is great but it doesn’t benefit IPS currently to make it a requirement. I don’t see why that’s so hard to understand. 

It’s like being a car repair company and only offering to repair electric cars. Yes, electric cars are great and the future. But you’re cutting off the majority of the current market. And saying “just upgrade to an electric car then duh” is a poor business mindset.

My server is upgraded to php 7. I don’t have an agenda for php 5.6. I’m purely speaking from a business point of view.

1. Could IPS lose clients by not requiring php 7. - answer: no

2. Could IPS lose client by requiring it - answer: yes, possibly.

how many more way can I say this ?

[RevengeFNF]

9 minutes ago, Tom S. said:

I feel like you just completely counter argued yourself there...

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to update their servers php version. And, what if you want to use two different sowftwares together. One requiring php 7 and one not compatible yet with php 7.

Yes, php 7 is great but it doesn’t benefit IPS currently to make it a requirement. I don’t see why that’s so hard to understand. 

It’s like being a car repair company and only offering to repair electric cars. Yes, electric cars are great and the future. But you’re cutting off the majority of the current market. And saying “just upgrade to an electric car then duh” is a poor business mindset.

My server is upgraded to php 7. I don’t have an agenda for php 5.6. I’m purely speaking from a business point of view.

1. Could IPS lose clients by not requiring php 7. - answer: no

2. Could IPS lose client by requiring it - answer: yes, possibly.

how many more way can I say this ?

Why people don't have the luxury to update their servers to php 7? I don't understand that.

If you have a script that does not support php 7, you can run php 5 and php 7 at the same time. But if in 2019 when PHP 5.6 will be EOL, you should think very careful if you should support software's that only supports a EOL PHP version

I strongly believe that security will be the big thing of Internet in the future(if its not already), and i can't understand how many people still use php 5.3, 5.4 or 5.5 when they are EOL. Even worse, providers selling services with those versions.

[Tom S.]

2 minutes ago, RevengeFNF said:

Why people don't have the luxury to update their servers to php 7? I don't understand that.

If you have a script that does not support php 7, you can run php 5 and php 7 at the same time. But if in 2019 when PHP 5.6 will be EOL, you should think very careful if you should support software's that only supports a EOL PHP version

I strongly believe that security will be the big thing of Internet in the future(if its not already), and i can't understand how many people still use php 5.3, 5.4 or 5.5 when they are EOL. Even worse, providers selling services with those versions.

It's mostly people that use shared hosting. It's whatever the server hosting companies have their servers set to and they have no real incentive to upgrade to 7. As currently 5.6 is supported (security wise) and everything works on it. If they upgrade to 7, they could get a real backlash of customers phoning in "My website doesn't work anymore!".

I agree that it's not good that servers sill use 5.6. I'm only trying to make that fact clear. Not advocating it.

And as php 5.6 reaches it's true EOL you will see a big shift then, I think.

I'd like it to happen sooner too. I do appreciate you devs have a hard time catering for both. I do feel for y'all.

[RevengeFNF]

6 minutes ago, Tom S. said:

It's mostly people that use shared hosting. It's whatever the server hosting companies have their servers set to and they have no real incentive to upgrade to 7. As currently 5.6 is supported (security wise) and everything works on it. If they upgrade to 7, they could get a real backlash of customers phoning in "My website doesn't work anymore!".

I agree that it's not good that servers sill use 5.6. I'm only trying to make that fact clear. Not advocating it.

And as php 5.6 reaches it's true EOL you will see a big shift then, I think.

I'd like it to happen sooner too. I do appreciate you devs have a hard time catering for both. I do feel for y'all.

Till January 2019 i don't think there is any problem with 5.6. It still receives securities updates, so at that department we are fine. The problem only starts when it becomes EOL.

In the image you posted above, there are still 0,8% of  the servers using PHP 4... That probably means thousands of sites. I can't even imagine the securities holes they have...

[Tom S.]

2 minutes ago, RevengeFNF said:

Till January 2019 i don't think there is any problem with 5.6. It still receives securities updates, so at that department we are fine. The problem only starts when it becomes EOL.

In the image you posted above, there are still 0,8% of  the servers using PHP 4... That probably means thousands of sites. I can't even imagine the securities holes they have...

That is a scary thought.

Well, IPS don’t support versions earlier than 5.6 as far as I’m aware. So not our problem.

[CodingJungle]

On 11/29/2017 at 7:18 AM, Tom S. said:

It's mostly people that use shared hosting. It's whatever the server hosting companies have their servers set to and they have no real incentive to upgrade to 7. As currently 5.6 is supported (security wise) and everything works on it. If they upgrade to 7, they could get a real backlash of customers phoning in "My website doesn't work anymore!".

i do a lot of work outside of IPS, and a lot of packages on composer are beginning to shift to requiring PHP 7.

shared hosting imho really needs to die off, in this day in age of AWS/DigitalOcean/etc, offering cheap cloud based vps's that surpass in a lot of regards what a shared host even remotely offers (and in most cases only a few more dollars a month), there really isn't a good enough excuse IMHO why you would spend upwards of $500+ with upto $210 a year renewals on a software package and then plop it onto a $3 month hostgator or godaddy shared host.

other than the speed advantages of php 7.0 and 7.1, there are also some really good language constructs that were added that make code a lot cleaner to write and understand, so from a developer POV PHP 7 is really the step in the right direction. but i can also understand why IPS would want to support 5.6, considering the adoption rate of php 7 is low, due to dev's dragging their feet on upgrading old PHP 4 scripts (that is what i see mostly that doesn't work in 7, are old style constructors and stuff like $this->$arg[0] which works fine in 5.6 and below, but will cause an error in 7, it needs to be $this->{$arg[0]}).

other than that, i will be waiting patiently to be able to use null operators in my IPS apps for general public consumption .