How Can I Change The WordPress PHP Version My Site Uses?

All Kinsta clients can change PHP versions for each site individually. You can choose between PHP 5.6, PHP 7, PHP 7.1, and PHP 7.2. We highly recommend at least PHP 7 as it is much faster, resource-friendly, and more secure than its predecessors. PHP 7.2, in fact, has shown to be 3x as fast in some configurations, as seen in our PHP benchmark reports.

Change WordPress PHP Version

To change the WordPress PHP version you’ll need to take the following steps:

• Log in to your MyKinsta dashboard
• Go to Sites and select the site you’d like to change the PHP version on
• Go to the Tools tab and find the PHP Engine section
• From the drop-down select your preferred PHP version

Changing the WordPress PHP version on Kinsta

Then click on the “Switch” button to confirm your choice.

Switch to PHP 7.2

This process may take up to 3 minutes. At the end of the process, your PHP engine will be restarted which may result in a couple of seconds of downtime for your WordPress backend only, your site visitors will not experience any downtime. While the PHP version is being changed you can navigate away from the above page but some actions like cache management will be unavailable until the new engine has been activated. You will receive a notification in the dashboard as soon as the change has been made.

No Longer Supported PHP Versions

We don’t offer the following older versions of PHP because they have officially met their End of Life and are no longer supported. This means they don’t receive updates and could contain unpatched security vulnerabilities.

• PHP 5.5 – No longer supported
• PHP 5.4 – No longer supported
• PHP 5.3 – No longer supported
• PHP 5.2 – No longer supported