It’s that time again, folks! Here are the HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Team’s recommendations for WordPress 6.8! For more context, feel free to check out the team’s previous posts highlighting recommendations for WordPress 6.7, WordPress 6.6, WordPress 6.5, WordPress 6.4, and WordPress 6.3. For each new version of WordPress, the Hosting Team aims to release an article examining compatibility between PHPPHP PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a general-purpose scripting language especially suited to web development. PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. and new WordPress versions, and offer recommendations for that specific WP version.

Please note, the goal isn’t to discuss WordPress compatibility or backwards compatibility, but rather to support hosts in architecting the ideal experience for new WordPress installations, and to guide sysadmins in upgrading sites in the optimal way.

This post goes into detail about compatibility, including the idea of “betaBeta Beta is the software development phase following alpha. A Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, speed or performance issues, and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. compatible”.

So, please continue reading for compatibility information, updated for WordPress 6.8.

Hosting Team Recommendation

The Hosting Team recommends Hosts use the following minimum versions for streamlined compatibility with WordPress 6.8: (note: these may differ from the global recommendations).

• PHP: 8.2.x, 8.3.x
• MySQLMySQL MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). MySQL is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.: 8.0.x, 8.4.x
• MariaDBMariaDB MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. MariaDB intended to maintain high compatibility with MySQL, ensuring a drop-in replacement capability with library binary parity and exact matching with MySQL APIs and commands.: 10.11.x, 11.4.x

IMPORTANT: These recommendations are primarily intended for new installations by hosting providers. For optimal performance and security, always use the latest compatible versions on new installs rather than setting up new WordPress websites with old PHP and DatabaseDatabase A database is an organized collection of data. Access to this data is usually provided by a "database management system" (DBMS) consisting of an integrated set of computer software that allows users to interact with one or more databases and provides access to all of the data contained in the database. Because of the close relationship between them, the term "database" is often used casually to refer to both a database and the DBMS used to manipulate it. Engine versions.

Where do the recommendations come from? The team reviewed a variety of configurations and options, and concluded these are the best ones!

WordPress serverServer A server is a piece of computer hardware or software that provides functionality for other programs or devices. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers. requirements

WordPress supports backwards compatibility, so even when there are more stable software versions available, that doesn’t mean they are the ones that WordPress recommends.

The current minimum WordPress 6.8 requirements:

• PHP: 7.2.25+
• MySQL: 5.5.5+
• MariaDB: 5.5.5+

Folks can read more about minimum requirements here: Server requirements.

WordPress’ compatibility “at the time”

WordPress 6.8 (released on April 15, 2025) has the following components available (stable or security-maintained versions only, and RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. only for informational purposes):

• PHP: 8.1 (Security Support), 8.2 (Active Support), 8.3 (Active Support), and 8.4 (Candidate Support).
• MySQL: 8.0 (LTS), 8.4 (LTS), and 9.1.
• MariaDB: 10.5 (LTS), 10.6 (LTS), 10.11 (LTS), 11.4 (LTS), and 11.5.
• Apache HTTPDApache HTTPD The Apache HTTP Server, colloquially called Apache, is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software. The vast majority of Apache HTTP Server instances run on a Linux distribution, but current versions also run on Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, and a wide variety of Unix-like systems.: 2.4.
• nginxNGINX nginx is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. Nginx is free and open-source software, released under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license.: 1.26, and 1.27.
• LitespeedLiteSpeed Web Server LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS), is a proprietary web server software. The software uses the same configuration format as Apache HTTP Server and is compatible with most Apache features. Enterprise 6.2.x, 6.3.x
• OpenLiteSpeedOpenLiteSpeed OpenLiteSpeed, is a open-source web server software. The software uses the same configuration format as Apache HTTP Server and is compatible with most Apache features. 1.7x , 1.8x

NOTE: PHP has extended the Security Support one extra year for (PHP 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4) and new PHP versions.

Please read more at: WordPress Compatibility.

WordPress and PHP

PHP is the main programming language on which WordPress code is based. This language runs on the web serverServer A server is a piece of computer hardware or software that provides functionality for other programs or devices. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers., and because of that it is critical to keep PHP software up to date on the server, both for security and functionality.

WordPress supports many versions of PHP, even some that are obsolete (Check out PHP Compatibility and WordPress Versions).

WordPress 6.8 (coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress.) is:

• fully compatible with PHP 7.2 (1), 7.3 (1), 7.4 (1), 8.0(1), 8.1, and 8.2.
• beta compatible with 8.3 and 8.4.

(1) SECURITY ALERT: Some older versions of PHP are no longer officially maintained by PHP, and are considered insecure and obsolete versions that should not be used in production. Users should check with your hosting provider about the security maintenance they can do if you’re running an older version of PHP on your server.

Looking for all the WordPress development tickets related to PHP? Take a look at this Trac PHP Search.

What does “beta” mean?

Beta support means that WordPress Core is working towards full compatibility with that PHP version, but there may still be some issues that are in the process of being resolved. Below are tickets outlining known issues regarding beta support for PHP 8.3 and 8.4. More on when a PHP version goes from beta to fully supported is documented by the core team.

PHP 8.3

• Deprecation notices. A deprecation notice is not an error, but rather an indicator of where additional work is needed for compatibility before using future versions, like PHP 9.0. With a deprecation notice, the PHP code will continue to work and nothing is broken.
• #59231: Prepare for PHP 8.3.. NOTE: Closed/Fixed
• #59232: Introduce #[Override] attribute to mark overloaded methods This attribute helps prevent coding errors by making it clear when a method is overloaded. It also assists with refactoring, debugging, and catching potential breaking changes in the parent class. NOTE: Has a patch, but moved to Future Release.
• #59233: Improve error handling for unserialize(). maybe_unserialize() function could still be confronted by data with trailing bytes. NOTE: Moved to Future Release.

PHP 8.4

• Deprecation notices. A deprecation notice is not an error, but rather an indicator of where additional work is needed for compatibility before PHP 9.0. With a deprecation notice, the PHP code will continue to work and nothing is broken.
• #62061: Prepare for PHP 8.4.. NOTE: Closed/Fixed

Other related tickets

PHP

• #51525: Add new functions apply_filters_single_type() and apply_filters_ref_array_single_type().  – moved to Future Release.
• #54183: Tests: decide on how to handle deprecations in PHPUnit – moved to Future Release.
• #54537: Tests: Enable PHP version check once PHP 8.0 compatibility is achieved.– moved to Future Release.
• #58874: Code Modernization: Consider using the null coalescing operator.– moved to Future Release.
• #59234: Introduce a wp_json_decode() function, including validation when available – This ticket has been closed and won’t be moving forward.

Upgrading WordPress

Do you have a version earlier than WordPress 6.8? 

If so, the Hosting Team recommends you visit the Upgrading WordPress page for more information on how to upgrade from WordPress 0.7 all the way to WordPress 6.8.

Anything else? Feel free to comment below!

#core, #php, #hosting

Ideas or suggestions

Anything else? Please leave a comment to add to the meeting.

Credit goes @amykamala for creating todays agenda!

#agenda, #meetings, #weekly-hosting-chat