WordPress needs the following versions of PHP & MySQL to be able to run on web hosting:
- PHP 4.3 or greater
- MySQL 4.1.2 or greater
But WordPress developers has decided to end support for PHP 4 & MySQL 4 and move on to newer versions of PHP & MySQL in WordPress 3.2 so as to take advantage of the newer versions of code available which will yield better performance.
The new requirement for running WordPress from version 3.2 will be the following:
- PHP 5.2 or greater
- MySQL 5.0.15 or greater
The change comes as a no surprise as sooner or later they would have to move on taking their code to a level where it is more secured and yields performance gain dealing with the issues that will arise and testing needed for the new version. I think it will be one of those releases which will require a lot of testing.
The WordPress team is confident that the change in requirements will be relatively inconsequential. According to Mark Jaquith, “Only around 11 percent of WordPress installs are running on a PHP version below 5.2 [and] fewer than 6 percent of WordPress users are running MySQL 4.” Mr. Jaquith adds that most users running a PHP version less than 5.2 belong to hosting providers which actually support PHP 5.2 or higher. These users may have the ability to enabled PHP 5 via their hosting provider’s control panel or request to be moved to a server with PHP 5.2 or higher and MySQL 5.0.15 or higher.
And now WordPress can also be listed on GoPHP5.org.
A new plugin Health Check plugin will take care of checking your hosting compatibility with WordPress 3.2 upon activation.
In summary: WordPress 3.1, due in late 2010, will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4 and MySQL 4. WordPress 3.2, due in the first half of 2011, will require PHP 5.2 or higher, and MySQL 5.0.15 or higher. Install the Health Check plugin to see if you’re ready!