We’re pleased to announce that the latest and greatest version of PHP – 8.4 – is now available on all our currently available web hosting plans. Plus, for reasons we’ll explain below, we’re not retiring an out-of-date version from our platforms at the same time.
PHP is the language behind millions of websites, powering WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento and loads more off-the-shelf and custom web applications.
The improvements and new features include:
- Chaining new without parentheses
- Property hooks
- New functions for finding array items
- Asymmetric visibility
- HTML5 parsing
- Multibyte trim functions
You can easily switch your hosting on an individual domain or even subdomain basis to use PHP 8.4, if you know that the website you’re running or building supports it, or if you just want to try it out. Simply log in to your hosting cPanel (directly, or via your Enbecom Account) to make the switch.
Over the coming months and years, website platforms, themes and plugin modules will be updated to run on PHP 8.4.
If you’re a hosting client you can easily switch your site between PHP 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 or 8.4 in your control panel to see what happens.
The PHP development team has just moved from a three year to a four year support cycle for each version of PHP, meaning that PHP 8.1 will be supported for a further year – to 31 December 2025. As a result, we’re not switching PHP 8.1 – or any version – off on our hosting platforms this time around.
If you’d like to bring your website to a UK-based hosting plan where the key software components are regularly updated for performance and security, take a look at our web hosting transfer offer.