The End of PublishPress Support for PHP 5.6

Starting in March 2023, we will start dropping support for PHP 5.6. After that date, when we update PublishPress plugins, they may no longer be fully compatible with PHP 5.6.

If your site is using PHP 5.6, please plan to update to at least PHP 7.2 in the next few months. During 2023, it will increasingly become difficult for WordPress users to continue using 5.6. This is because the WordPress and PHP community is moving away from 5.6.

Here are some examples of the trend away from PHP 5.6:

  • The PHP team ended support for 5.6 in December 2018, which is more than five years ago now.
  • The WordPress team is considering a plan to end support for 5.6 with the release of WordPress 6.2 in March. This is happening because less than 5% of WordPress sites use 5.6 now.
  • The PublishPress team use some external PHP libraries that need updating. The new versions of those libraries support PHP 8 but not PHP 5.6.

We will always make earlier versions of plugins available for people who really can't update their server.

If you have any questions about this, please open a support ticket or post on WordPress.org. We'll be happy to help.

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