WordPress warning.
A number of clients have contacted us because they’ve noticed that WordPress is now displaying an ominous message on their dashboard that states, “WordPress has detected that your site is running on an insecure version of PHP.” This, unfortunately, is gratuitous, self-serving fearmongering (often referred to as “FUD“) on the part of WordPress the organisation. However, what is true is that version 5.2 of WordPress requires a higher version of PHP than our operating system vendor currently supplies. Therefore, providing the necessary version of PHP will require more work than just clicking a mythical “upgrade PHP” button somewhere, as some assume we just need to do.
Please be assured that we are alive to this issue, and are working to address it as soon as we can. However, it will likely take at least a couple of weeks.
Thank-you for your patience.
Update, 2021-06-28: The usual list of “requirements” that WordPress users look at is the one at wordpress.org/about/requirements, that helpfully includes an email you can send to your hosting company demanding … err … asking for certain versions of the necessary software. A more nuanced (and intelligent) version of this page is available at make.wordpress.org/hosting/handbook/server-environment. It contains far better language and explanations that mirror anything a thinking hosting company will tell you about the demands made by the WordPress organisation.
