February 6, 2022
PHP 8.1 was released on November 25, 2021, and we all get excited because it usually brings in new, exciting features and performance improvements. We are happy to announce that PHP 8.1 is now available at ChemiCloud for all environments.
For a complete list of improvements, new features, and deprecations, be sure to review the PHP.net official documentation and changelog.
Before updating your PHP version to PHP 8.1, we’d like to remind you of a few things:
- To prevent any data loss, always make sure to create a backup of your sites before taking action.
- Test your sites in a staging environment first and upgrade your live site only if you experience no issues.
- WordPress 5.9 (current stable release) supports PHP 8.1. Have in mind that not all plugins and themes might be yet compatible with PHP 8.1. Make sure all your plugins and themes support PHP 8.1 before upgrading your PHP version. Suppose you notice a plugin or theme issue on your site. In that case, we recommend switching to PHP 7.4 or PHP 8.0 and reaching out to the developer of the plugin or theme regarding the PHP 8.1 incompatibility.
- PHP 8.1 and PHP 8.0 are not yet compatible with ionCube Loader. If you rely on ionCube Loader for your site, do not upgrade to PHP 8.1 at this time.
And now, let’s see how to enable PHP 8.1 on your sites!
You can easily update your PHP version to 8.1, from cPanel, using the PHP Selector by following the steps described below:
1) Log in to your cPanel account.
2) Navigate to the Software section and click on Select PHP Version.
3) Click on the PHP Version drop-down box and select PHP 8.1 version:
4) Click on Set as current button to save your PHP version change.
That's it!