Hi Andreas,
Sounds like a good plan to update PHP. I would consider doing this slightly differently in your scenario.
Because you have an existing site with existing functionality, instead of developing locally you could also develop the new site on a temporary subdomain (on the same server). You can set a different PHP version (7.4) for your subdomain without affecting the existing site (but double-check with your host just to be sure).
Changing the PHP version in your hosting account is like flicking a switch and is more or less instant. If you use caching or a proxy such as CloudFlare, you may need to clear those to see the changes.
The advantage of developing on a subdomain is that you’re working on the server the site will be on afterwards. So you have the exact same setup. Also, if there are existing files you want to move across, you can do so easily with your host’s file-manager, which will be faster than FTP.
You could either start from scratch with a completely fresh install (which may be good if this is an older site).
Or you could create a clone of the site with the duplicator plugin and install that on your subdomain. That would have the advantage that all the content is on the site already. You could then deactivate all the site’s plugins and switch to a default theme, before updating your PHP version. This would hopefully keep your site working, after which you could update everything (including all plugins) and start activating plugins again one by one, checking the site’s front-end each time. This would also be a good moment to do a plugin review and only keep those essential to the site.
When you’re done you can delete everything on the old site, update PHP there, and use the duplicator plugin again to move the new site from the subdomain to the main domain.
I hope this helps 🙂
A few things to consider:
– My cPanel all set PHP version on a hosting wide basis, maybe your support can help you with this. So I suggest using localhost or even different hosting.
– Maybe upgrade to intermediate versions of PHP in several steps, say to 5.6 which is widely used and substantially compatible, then ver 7.0 or 7.2
– There is a plugin that checks PHP compatibility:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/php-compatibility-checker/
suggest using it to find your hot spots.
– Many of your plugins and theme will have been updated and available in 7.4 compliant code. Others may have been abandoned and you will either have to upgrade them yourself or replace their functionality.
– Which version of WordPress are you running ? This is available from the variable “$wp_version” in file: “wp-includes/version.php”
In upgrading your WordPress various issues may arise including that your Javascript version will also get updated. One school of thought advises to upgrade is stages.
See “Upgrading Across Multiple Versions” in:
Upgrading WordPress – Extended Instructions
Hi Dave and Ross
Thanks so much for the detailed advice.
The website/wordpress hasn’t been updated since 2017 and is still running the same version from then.
The problem is that the website consists of 6 pages, where 3 of them are made with separate WP-folders in the FTP (so every page has a different login), and the remaining 3 are made with Adobe’s Muse (outdated). Since the website also needs a complete redesign, I figured it would just be better to start from scratch:
Delete everything on FTP and delete all the 6 databases
Update PHP to version 7.4
Check my locally built site with PHP compatibility plugin
Then upload my locally built wordpress (on a newly created server, but using the same FTP where I deleted everything before)
This is also done so all of my 6 pages are in the same wordpress account, instead of having to switch logins for each page.
Currently my host doesn’t have a file manager, so I have to do everything via. filezilla or so.
I have actually already built most of my new design offline, and I just wanted to confirm my actions.
Is it possible with the scenario I have presented?
Thanks a lot again
Yes, your plan to develop a new website which functions like the old one looks quite realistic.
Yes Andreas, I agree with Ross; your plan sounds good. The previous setup sounds messy and outdated and would be quite impractical to work with. I would have chosen the same or a very similar course of action.
Good luck with it!
