For the millions of sites already running WordPress 5.0, 85% are using PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 5.6 or above. We’ve also recently observed that showing notifications to encourage users to upgrade their PHP version has been very effective. Yoast SEO experimented with this last year, and found that site owners upgraded their PHP version at twice the rate than before they were showed the notification.

In light of that, I’d like to propose that in April 2019, we bump the minimum PHP version requirement to be 5.6. Sites that choose to remain on 5.5 or below will still receive security updates and possibly bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes, but would not be able to upgrade to the latest major WordPress version until they upgraded to a supported version of PHP.

Similarly, I’d like to propose that in April 2019, we bump the minimum MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. version requirement to be 5.5. 98.5% of WordPress 5.0 sites are using MySQL 5.5 and above.

Depending upon feedback and effectiveness, we can follow up by bumping the required PHP version to 7 as early as December 2019.