How To Update PHP in WordPress because you have discovers a warning that appears on the dashboard.

If you need to fix your php version because you received a red update warning like the one below, it can be a bit concerning. It’s not an issue though that should over worry you as their is an incredibly east fix.

All you will need to do is access your control panel and follow a few simple steps in my guide. If the words PHP and code put you off, don’t let it. I’m a designer and I’m not a coder. This is for people that just want solutions and can follow a couple of instructions. In fact the hardest thing will probably be logging into your Control Panel as often its the password gets lost and needs to be reset!

Whats more having an updated PHP version will speed up your site and help it to be more secure and run quicker. That’s great news as quick websites improves your ranking in the search engines.

Why the need for a PHP update?

So you got the horrible warning notice “WordPress has detected that your site is running on an insecure version of PHP ” PHP is basically the code that runs WordPress on your server. Your server from time to time will get new updates of PHP. This means that the performance of your website will improve. So updating your PHP is only going to be a good thing for your business. One of the main improvements in PHP 7 is it offers WordPress users a lot more speed.

WordPress suggests PHP version 7.3 or greater.
I’m finding version 7.3 to be incredibly stable. You can check the recommended version for WordPress here.

Update PHP WordPress in less than a minute

Let me assure you it’s a really easy fix and within a few minutes max, you’ll have this totally resolved.

Time needed: 1 minute.

Update PHP WordPress

Make sure you can access cPanel
Your Control Panel is where you can locate the PHP upgrade. If you don’t have this access, then you’ll need to just ask the person who hosts your website to provide you with a login detail for what’s known as a cPanel or control panel. To go into
the cPanel you simply just do a forward slash after your website domain e.g. (…com/cPanel) Log in > Scroll down to Software and click on select PHP version
Select the latest PHP version available
Once in PHP selector, note your current version and select the latest version in the drop down menu.
That’s it, your WordPress site has now been fixed with the PHP update
You can make sure it is all working by refreshing your WordPress and the red warning triangle should disappear. If you don get any issues with the latest version of PHP go back to your previous PHP version o the cPanel selector

What is cPanel?

cPanel or control Panel is the front end area of your servers. Here you will find all sorts of
settings so you log in and you’ll be given various icons depending on how much account authority you’ve been given by the administrator. This is where the ability to update your server PHP resides.

This area of the cPanel will report the current PHP version and then you’ll see whether their’s an updated version. I always recommended backing up before you ever make any changes to a website, just in case anything goes wrong. Yet the best bit about PHP upgrades is if anything goes wrong when you go to a new version of PHP, you can come back into the cPanel and revert back to the version that did work.

How to see the update php worked on wordpress

The easiest way to see if the PHP update worked is to now go back to your WordPress dashboard where you had the red warning triangle. If you havent refreshed the page then do so. Now the page is refreshed and you don’t have that warning any longer and the PHP version is fully up to date. Job Done!

You may well now find the new PHP version instigatres some updates for your plugins. So its best to go through each of these to help keep everything secure and functioning with speed.

In my finest words…
“Update to PHP is so simple a child could do it – finding the login details to cPanel that’s the tricky bit”
Zanet Design

I really hope this has been useful as i’m literally teaching what I’ve learnt over many years as a web designer. If you find any issues or have any questions then please comment below and i will do my best to answer them.