Upcoming Change: PHP 7+ Code in Photonic Version 2.90

This is a public service announcement regarding the next version of Photonic.

In version 2.81 of Photonic (released in June 2022), I had flagged the plugin as requiring PHP 7.0 to work. However, I deliberately did not include any code corresponding to PHP 7.0. In fact, if you have been running PHP 5.6x, you should be fine. My intent was to let you know that changes that will break on PHP 5.6x are coming.

The next version of Photonic, 2.90 will not work on PHP 5.6. It will require at least PHP 7.0 to function.

Normally I wait for WP core to remove support for a PHP version, then stabilize for a couple of releases, before I drop support at my end. However, this time, I am dropping support before WP. This is because PHP 5.6 has been in EOL for several years now (it was EOL’d even before WP made it its lowest supported version), and is currently used just by 4.4% of WP sites (source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats/).

I anticipate releasing version 2.90 next week. This is how you are impacted:

1. If you wish to continue using Photonic and be on the latest version, check your WP version. You can do so from within Photonic (Photonic → Getting Started → Technical Stuff).
   
   If it mentions that your PHP version is 7.0 or higher, you are good. No action is needed.
   
   If it mentions that your PHP version is 5.6.x, you need to upgrade. Work with your hosting provider to see how to do that.
   
2. If you are unable to upgrade to a higher PHP version for whatever reason, do not upgrade Photonic!
   
3. If you have already upgraded Photonic and your site is down, try upgrading PHP. If you cannot do that, get an older Photonic version from https://wordpress.org/plugins/photonic/advanced/ – there is a dropdown for previous versions, and you can get 2.84 from there. That will work on older versions of PHP.