I’ve been putting off updating PHP my server for ages, but PHP5 has been out for 3 years now, and with version 5.2, is finally stable and reliable enough for mainstream production use. Also, The PHP Group has officially announced PHP4’s "end-of-life" – that means as from the 31st December 2007, the only releases they will make for PHP4 will be for critical security issues only, culminating with PHP4 being dropped totally in August 2008.
The other deciding factor for me has been the GoPHP5 project, which has been gaining momentum. Basically, it is a project that has been set up to encourage the move over to PHP5.2 now (as I said earlier) that this version "good enough" for mainstream use. So, come 5th February 2008, many projects that are responsible for PHP web based applications like forums, galleries and CMSs will drop support for PHP4.
So, I have set a date for the 1st October, which gives sirium.net users just under 6 weeks to check that the software they are using will work as it should under PHP5. They have also been given the option for a free temporary test account on the VPS, which has PHP5 and MySQL5 already installed and working.
Oh yes, the dedicated server only has MySQL 4.0 on it, the cPanel requires MySQL 4.1 and later to use PHP5 – so I will also have update MySQL at the same time. I will though, jump straight to version 5. Hopefully, there will be no problems updating the databases (And yes, I will make backups before I start!)
I can still see some people leaving it to the last minute, and then complaining that things are not working. Ah, such fun.