Error:

WARNING: You are using a version of PHP that no longer receives security updates.
This puts your system at risk. Please contact host so they can update PHP.

Software Requirements:

When your host updates PHP, please make sure they follow the CMS requirements guideline here:

http://elevatedx.com/requirements.php

Your host should specifically take note of these changes:

- MySQL: We will be requiring MySQL 8.0.28 or MariaDB 10.8.2 or greater moving forward.

Please have your host update your database prior to updating PHP.

- ImageMagick: Our software will require ImageMagick 7.0.25 or greater. Please make sure your host installs this or upgrades the existing ImageMagick that is installed on their site.

- IonCube: The software will require IonCube 12.0.1 or greater to be run on PHP 8.1.

- FFmpeg 4.1.x or greater is required.

Upgrading to PHP 8.1:

We highly recommend upgrading to PHP 7.4 first before going to PHP 8.1. There are certain types of errors that PHP 7.4 catches that don't happen in PHP 7.3, but show as notices within PHP 7.4 beforehand. Some of these notices are fatal errors in PHP 8.1.

Catching and fixing problems before upgrading:

In Global Settings -> Templating -> Log PHP Errors, this should be turned to on.

After this is on, give this a day or two and make a point of browsing your sites.

If there are template errors, you will see these listed on the Home Page if your admin panel:

Any template related errors should be corrected in your templates before upgrading to PHP 8.1.

If you are using smarty templates:

Smarty is not supported in PHP 8.1. You'll need to upgrade your templates to use our PHP template engine.

If you would like to use our newest templates, please see here for templates, or submit a ticket and we'll get your new templates set up.

If you are using standard templates:

We recommend upgrading to a current version of our templates if possible. Current templates should work in PHP 8.1 without issues.

Please take a look at some of our new templates

If you are using custom templates:

In this case, your designer will need to fix any PHP related errors that happen in these templates before upgrading.

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After any errors are resolved, you should be able to upgrade to PHP 8.1.

If you need more time after January 2024:

Please let us know. We can pause software software updates on your install so you can finish migration. We won't be able to do any bugfixes or security fixes on old software installs, but you should be able to have your existing sites still live until you are ready.

Upgrading from an old version of PHP to 7.3:

Please see this guide for more info.

Upgrade Rationale:

In order to protect our clients from hacking attacks, we have made our CMS require a major version of PHP that supports security updates.

Here are list of dates that we have discontinued, or will discontinue support for a specific version of PHP

• PHP 5.2: October 27th, 2014
• PHP 5.3: December 15th, 2014
• PHP 5.4: May 1st, 2017
• PHP 5.5: May 1st, 2017
• PHP 5.6: December 31st, 2018
• PHP 7.0: December 31st, 2018
• PHP 7.1: January 31st, 2021
• PHP 7.2: January 31st, 2021
• PHP 7.3: January 31st, 2024
• PHP 7.4: January 31st, 2024
• PHP 8.0: This version of PHP is not supported.

For newer versions of PHP, these dates coincide with when PHP stops receiving security updates:

• PHP 5.2 stopped receiving security updates as of January 6th, 2011.
• PHP 5.3 stopped receiving security updates as of August 14th, 2014.
• PHP 5.4 stopped receiving security updates as of September 3rd, 2015.
• PHP 5.5 stopped receiving security updates as of July 21st, 2016.
• PHP 5.6 stopped receiving security updates as of December 31st, 2018.
• PHP 7.0 stopped receiving security updates as of December 3st, 2018.
• PHP 7.1 stopped receiving security updates as of December 1st, 2019.
• PHP 7.1 stopped receiving security updates as of December 1st, 2019.
• PHP 7.2 stopped receiving security updates as of November 30th, 2020.
• PHP 7.3 stopped receiving security updates as of December 6th, 2021.
• PHP 7.4 stopped receiving security updates as of November 28th, 2022.

When a major version of PHP no longer receives security updates, it opens your server to hacking attacks.

Example:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/php-bug-allowing-site-hijacking-still-menaces-internet-22-months-on/

Moving forward, the CMS will only operate on versions of PHP that receive security updates. This makes your install more secure.