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i am thinking about migrating from php 5.3 to php 5.6 on my company's server, but i'm concerned about how it may affect other websites on the server, especially joomla and wordpress app's, which were hosted some few years back, like 2011. I was trying to host a new website that uses 'get_result()' but i was having some errors when hosting it, even though mysqlnd driver was present, i could only fetch my results using'bind_result()'. so i debugged it, and found out that it's because of a certain driver nd_mysqli which is present in php 5.6. So that's why i decided to upgrade. Are there any issues that could come after this upgrade? Or is there another way of getting the nd_mysqli driver? though honestly i'd prefer to upgrade, this is 2017, it's about time for that.

Ikechukwu
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    Theoretically, it shouldn't affect much, and may actually improve things. But you can set up a test server and copy everything over to test it first. – aynber Feb 20 '17 at 13:03

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A fair amount has changed between 5.3 and 5.6, so it is hard to say exactly what issues you may face.

If you are running recent versions of joomla and wordpress the chances are they are compatible as the relevant developers will already have fixed any issues, but if they are as old as php 5.3 then you may run into issues.

Whatever you do, you should create a test server to be sure.

The following pages show the changes that have been made:

You really should upgrade though php 5.3 no longer receives security patches and you are likely vulnerable to something.

Theo
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  • thank you, but all are the function available in 5.3 also available in 5.6? – Ikechukwu Feb 20 '17 at 15:06
  • The short answer is no, a number of functions were removed, but its more complicated than just functions being available or not; as functions have also changed. Please review the provided links - in particular the "Backward Incompatible Changes" sections which detail the differences: http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.incompatible.php http://php.net/manual/en/migration55.incompatible.php http://php.net/manual/en/migration56.incompatible.php - I could list them all but it would be just copy and paste. – Theo Feb 20 '17 at 15:14
  • One major change that may cause issues is the deprecation of mysql_* functions in 5.4, and subsequent removal in 5.5 – Theo Feb 20 '17 at 15:19
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It depends on the versions of Joomla and WordPress.

For example, it might be possible to get Joomla 1.5 and older versions of WordPress running on PHP 5.6, but you will need to suppress strict errors as per https://stackoverflow.com/a/9984309/1983389 or similar. It will also depend on what extensions / add-ons are being used.

As @Theo says, it is probably best to do this change in a test environment first so that any issues can be identified and resolved before proceeding with the change on the production server.

An alternative and better long term strategy might be to upgrade the Joomla, WordPress and any other applications on the server before upgrading PHP.

Community
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Neil Robertson
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