Title: Mimimum PHP Version
Last modified: June 11, 2020

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# Mimimum PHP Version

 *  Resolved [Presskopp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/presskopp/)
 * (@presskopp)
 * [5 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/)
 * “PHP version requirement (5.4 minimum) not met”
    (templates/minify/status-tab.
   php:47)
 * On [https://wordpress.org/support/article/requirements/](https://wordpress.org/support/article/requirements/)
   5.6 is set as minimum and will soon be set to 7.2 – don’t you want to change 
   this recommendation?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [Marc Lacroix](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcusig/)
 * (@marcusig)
 * [5 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-12975885)
 * Hi there,
 * The _recommendation_ isn’t the same as the _minimum requirement_.
    With close
   to 1 million active installs on a plugin that’s been on the repo for several 
   years, there are always lots of people with old setups which would break if we
   suddenly added PHP 7+ code.
 * So while we recommend the latest stable versions of PHP, the code still supports
   older versions.
 * Marc.
 *  Thread Starter [Presskopp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/presskopp/)
 * (@presskopp)
 * [5 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-12976639)
 * I understand the difference between requirement and recommendation, still, WP
   _requires_ 5.6 and you talk about 5.4.
 *  [Marc Lacroix](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcusig/)
 * (@marcusig)
 * [5 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-12976766)
 * Yes, the _current version_ of WP requires PHP 5.6.
    WP-Optimize on the other 
   hand is meant to work on older versions of WordPress as well (from 3.9 at the
   moment), which have lower PHP requirements.
 * PHP 5.4 is the minimum version for the minify feature to work, because of the
   libraries used. There’s no point in rising it to 5.6 or 7, while it works with
   5.4, or is there?
 * Rising the required version only has a purpose if the code actually uses features
   introduced in a certain version.
 * In a perfect world, everyone would be using the latest versions of everything.
   But looking at [the WP stats](https://wordpress.org/about/stats/), about 25% 
   of WP installs use versions below v5, and 10% of installs run on versions of 
   PHP under 5.6. Assuming the same proportion of WP-Optimize’s users have PHP <
   5.6, it means that around 90K websites could break if we move to 5.6, which we’ll
   try to avoid.
 * Now if you do have good arguments why we should up the required version, I’d 
   like to know them to take them into consideration in our future choices.
 * Marc.
 *  Thread Starter [Presskopp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/presskopp/)
 * (@presskopp)
 * [5 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-12977495)
 * Hi Marc, I’m asking out of a translator perspective and when you say, this is
   by design, I’m ok with it. Could also have been a leftover, that’s why I was 
   asking.
 * Out of that box I personally would do everything to make people stop using PHP
   5.X
 * Can be closed. Have a nice day!
 *  [Marc Lacroix](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcusig/)
 * (@marcusig)
 * [5 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-13001834)
 * Yes it’d be great if everyone was updating their servers to the latest PHP versions.
   We wouldn’t have to think about breaking people’s sites 🙂
 * We don’t design the plugin to run on lower versions of PHP (we’ll rewrite anything
   that’s deprecated in recent PHP versions), but we don’t bump the requirements
   just for the sake of it. In the future, when there will be language features 
   we really want to use, we will definitely bump the requirements. But for now 
   it’s not necessary.
 * Anyways, have a nice day, and thanks for translating 🙂
 * Marc.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Mimimum PHP Version’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Marc Lacroix](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcusig/)
 * Last activity: [5 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mimimum-php-version/#post-13001834)
 * Status: resolved