The new PHP 8, thanks to its new JIT compilation engine, has revealed a positive impact on performance. And as we know, more speed means that our WordPress website will be able to serve more users and rank better!
However, a “Major” version release implies being very careful about incompatibilities.
Read more if you want to test the PHP 8 compatibility of your website in a Staging Environment without compromising production.
Resources: 15 minutes of your time + 1 wetopi server. (sign up to get your FREE development server).
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We cannot offer a generalized recipe. Bearing in mind that the new version of PHP8.0 carries a good number of incompatibilities and that the combinations of Plugins and WordPress themes are endless. There is no other option but to test with your own website.
Testing the PHP 8 compatibility of your WordPress site
NOTE: If you don’t have a copy of your site in wetopi, sign-up and request a FREE migration (no commitments, no credit card).
1 Login to the hosting panel
Login to your Wetopi and go to your site page.
2 Clone your production WordPress install
If your server is in production, first of all, click the “Clone” button you’ll find in your server “Options menu”:
Always work on a clone copy (what we call a “staging” or “playground” environment). Let us avoid any mishap in production that could bother your users.
3 Switch to the php8 engine
Open the Advanced section inside the “Menu Options” of your cloned server, and click over v8.0 to switch from PHP 7.3 to PHP 8.0:
4 Time to test your WordPress install
Your turn!
Test the Extensions, Themes and functionalities of your website. Don’t forget to check the logs for errors.
Conclusion
PHP 8 first release has been in Dec 2020. We have to say it is a little bit soon for its adoption in your production site. However, if you want to take advantage of all the new improvements, we recommend you to test it first in your playground environment.
Start testing the compatibility of PHP 8.0 with your WordPress Theme and Plugins as soon as possible.
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