Author Archives: Laura Harrington

PHP 8.2 Update Timeline

Security support for PHP version 8.1 will end on November 25, 2024. As part of VIP’s continued focus on your application’s security, we are committed to ensuring all customers have updated to PHP 8.2 ahead of this date. Below, you will find VIP’s PHP update timeline.

If customers have not updated their environments by the dates outlined, VIP will update the environments on the customer’s behalf. Please note that any updates made by VIP could result in issues if the proper customer testing has not been completed. If issues arise, we’ll do our best to assist where we can, but ask that you please test and deploy the update ahead of this schedule, to avoid any interruptions. This update cannot be deferred, and VIP is here to support you and your team as you work toward it.

VIP Timeline For Environments Not Yet On PHP 8.2

Tuesday, October 29, 2024
VIP Updates Non-Production Environments to PHP 8.2
VIP will begin updating all non-production environments that are not yet on PHP 8.2. We are proceeding with non-production environments first to provide customers time to address any issues that arise as a result of the update, before updating production environments.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
VIP Updates Production Environments to PHP 8.2
VIP will begin updating all production environments that are not yet on PHP 8.2. After this date, working with your teams on post-update issues will be the priority.

Earlier PHP Version Options Removed
The option to select PHP version 8.1 will be removed from the software management tool.

Monday, November 25, 2024
PHP 8.1 End of Life
Security support for PHP 8.1 ends.

Let VIP Do The Heavy Lifting!

Instead of the do-it-yourself approach, focus on your key priorities while our experienced staff manage, validate, and implement your PHP update for you with the specific needs of your applications in mind. Maximize your team’s resources, improve site stability, and unlock peace of mind with our Upgrade Assurance Service. This is a popular new service that we offer, for both WordPress and PHP updates, so we recommend securing your spot early. If you’re interested in learning more, please connect with your Relationship Manager, or reach out to our Support Team.

Helpful Resources

Support
VIP is here to help along the way, and our Support team is always available to answer questions as you and your team work through the update. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need assistance.

Tooling
Your application’s software versions can be managed directly by you in the VIP Dashboard.

Documentation
We have helpful documentation available to guide you through preparing your application code for a PHP update.

PHP 8.3 is available!

In case you missed it, VIP announced the availability of PHP 8.3, in December 2023. We strongly encourage your team to stay ahead of the PHP update curve, and begin testing and updating to PHP 8.3 this year.

Future PHP End-of-Life Dates

To better plan for the road ahead, please be aware of the current security support end-of-life (EOL) schedule for the following PHP versions. These dates are pulled from the official PHP schedule, here. VIP will continue to post to the Lobby with our updated timeline for each year, which will likely follow the same outline as shared above, wrapping up roughly 2 weeks ahead of the PHP date.

PHP Update Timelines

Deprecated PHP Version	VIP Version Update Complete	PHP Security Support EOL
8.1	November 12, 2024	November 25, 2024
8.2	November 24, 2025*	December 8, 2025
8.3	November 9, 2026*	November 23, 2026

*Date is tentative

Reminder: PHP Updates Begin in 30 Days

OCT 26 UPDATE: The ability to roll back to a version earlier than PHP 8.1, will remain available in the software update tool, through Sunday, November 26- the last day of security support by PHP. Earlier version options will be permanently removed on Monday, November 27, 2023.

In July, we called your attention to the upcoming security support end-of-life for PHP 8.0, and the timeline that VIP has outlined, to prepare customers ahead of the formal PHP deadline of November 26, 2023.

We are now 30 days out from the first wave of VIP updates commencing, and are taking this opportunity to remind customers to please test and deploy the update ahead of this schedule, to avoid any interruptions. Below are a few scenarios we’ve outlined to ensure your teams know what to expect. In addition, our PHP Updates documentation was recently updated to include a more robust outline to help your teams address these updates now, and in the future.

Customer Scenarios

Ideal: We’ve tested and deployed the update ahead of the VIP schedule.
Amazing! There will be no surprises for your team, and VIP will not touch your application when running our updates.

Incomplete: We’ve tested this update, and are going to wait for VIP to run the update.
While it’s awesome that you’ve tested your application(s) against the update, we don’t recommend waiting for VIP to run the update for you, for a few reasons:

VIP may run the update at a time in which your team is not available. If the update deploys with no issue, this is not a problem, but if it doesn’t, having your team available to address any issues with your application puts your business in a better position.
While differences between test environments and production environments may be minor, we know that there is always the possibility for tweaks needed after a production deployment. We suggest eliminating that variable ahead of time.
Updating the software version of PHP can be managed directly from the VIP Dashboard.

Risk: We have not had time to test the update ahead of the VIP schedule.
VIP is not able to defer this update. We are adhering to the PHP schedule, and keeping your application secure is a top priority. If VIP runs the update without a customer testing first, there is a possibility that your application may run into issues that your team needs to rapidly address.

VIP Timeline for Non-Updated Environments

Monday, October 30, 2023

VIP Updates Non-Production Environments to PHP 8.1
VIP will begin updating all non-production environments that are not yet on PHP 8.1. We are proceeding with non-production environments first in order to provide customers time to address any issues that arise as a result of the update, before updating production.

Monday, November 13, 2023

VIP Updates Production Environments to PHP 8.1
VIP will begin updating all production environments that are not yet on PHP 8.1. After this date, working with your teams on post-update issues will be the priority.

Earlier PHP Version Options Removed
The option to select PHP version 7.4 (deprecated) and 8.0 is removed from the software management tool.

Sunday, November 26, 2023

PHP 8.0 End of Life
Security support for PHP 8.0 ends.

Questions?

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support team with any questions.

Preparing your sites for the busy retail season

The holiday season is just around the corner, and for ecommerce businesses, that means a surge in online shopping activity. While shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday have historically been peak days for ecommerce activity, we know that marketing campaigns are releasing earlier and spurring consumer purchasing over the entire season.

With an increase in customers visiting your sites, it’s essential to ensure that your application is well-prepared to handle the increased traffic and provide a seamless experience.

WordPress VIP has timely, expert advice to help your teams prepare for the rush. Below, you’ll find our Professional Services team’s top recommendations—from identifying performance bottlenecks to optimizing object caching—to set your sites up for holiday success.

Identify performance bottlenecks

The first step in preparing an application for the heightened demands of the peak ecommerce season is identifying performance bottlenecks. Many can be pinpointed with performance analysis tools such as New Relic and Query Monitor.

New Relic slow transaction traces offer a great starting point to identify which parts of a transaction are responsible for latency. Sorting by “Most Dissatisfying” is an effective way of surfacing the overall slowest pain points.

Query Monitor is useful for pinpointing exactly what’s happening on a given page, surfacing specific query-related details, and highlighting slow database queries that warrant further attention. Make sure to leverage Query Monitor when logged out for the most reliable results, as code pathways used when logged in can surface false positives or false negatives.

Leverage full-page caching

Full-page caching is the primary scaling mechanism for sites on the VIP Platform, protecting a site’s origin server from increased load (where a high cache hit rate exists) by retaining valuable backend resources to handle sudden changes in traffic.

While e-commerce sites require cookies on some pages, many do not, and setting cookies that mistakenly bust the cache on all pages is a common observation of e-commerce sites. To better position your application for scale:

Avoid setting user cookies that bust the cache across all pages
Limit the use of query parameters and non-GET requests that bypass the cache
Increase the cache lifetime (max-age) for less frequently updated & requested URLs

Fix slow database queries

Slow database queries are often a quick path to poor application performance. Our new Slow Query Logs page in the VIP Dashboard can help identify issues bogging down application performance, setting you on a course to debug connections to your database. The following are effective and easily adopted methods to improve slow database queries:

Offload non-performant queries with Enterprise Search (ES). Not all queries should be offloaded to Enterprise Search, but those that demonstrate evidence of performance issues are often better served via ES. For guidance, check our documentation.
Add extra object caching to queries, particularly around custom queries.
Reduce the use of JOINs, CALC_FOUND_ROWS, and limit results returned. Review our documentation to modify WP_Query requests for better performance.
Build queries with indexes in mind, such as the difference between post_date vs. post_date_gmt. View information about the core WordPress database schema on WordPress.org and WPVIP’s custom post meta index in our documentation.

We have more information on optimizing database queries in our documentation.

Avoid database writes

Applications hosted on the VIP Platform leverage multiple databases for optimum performance, with writes sent to an environment’s primary database and reads sent to database replicas.

Frontend requests that result in database writes can cause subsequent queries to read only from the primary database, which can negatively affect site performance and stability under load.

Use Query Monitor to identify if queries are writing to the database.
Avoid direct database queries in code wherever possible. Instead, use WordPress API functions for fetching and manipulating data.
If direct database queries are required, follow these best practices.
When required, frontend database queries should always be related to a user-requested interaction—not automated (such as a “hit counter”). Processing AJAX or REST API requests through Javascript can also increase the full-page cache hit ratio.

Optimize object caching

Each WordPress environment is provisioned with Memcached, offering an opportunity to cache repetitive or expensive computations in memory to improve performance. Optimizing the use of object caching can be an effective way to further improve application performance, via methods such as those below:

Assess object cache statistics with Query Monitor, including request time, volume of GETs, and the total size of all objects stored in memory
Leverage wp_cache_get_multiple() to group high volumes of Memcached GET requests and minimise the overhead that occurs when retrieving data from the object cache via high volumes of lookups/sets.
Upgrade to WordPress 6.2 or greater to take advantage of multi-get functionality built into WordPress core
Keep individual cache objects under 1 MB in size (compressed), or they may fail to be stored–this is particularly important for the alloptions option, as mentioned in our documentation. Keeping object size down also reduces the amount of data being sent back and forth over the network and makes the request much faster. For example, instead of caching the entire result of a WP_Query request, which could mean many full WP_Post objects, consider caching the Post IDs and performing a much faster database query via IDs.
Try to cache many small requests together in a larger request. For example, generating a page that will gather data from the post object, then collect thumbnail data from post meta, and then term/term meta data for additional context can quickly multiply the number of cache requests to build a page. Instead, cache the generated HTML output to perform this process in one single cache request rather than dozens or hundreds.
Make use of helpers such as the Cache Nav Menus plugin, which provides a drop-in replacement to WordPress core’s wp_nav_menu() that adds additional caching to reduce database and Memcached usage when generating complicated navigation menus.

Do you have questions about any of these recommendations? Our Support Team would be happy to help.

30 days to better site performance

If you’re interested in taking site and application performance to the next level, we encourage you to explore our VIP Performance Service.

Led by WordPress Core experts, our team can dive deep into your code, determine the root cause of performance issues, highlight opportunities to improve SEO performance, and deliver tailored recommendations that prepare your site for exponential growth.

We then partner with your engineering team and/or agency to apply those recommendations, and perform a secondary review to assess the impact of that work.

If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to your Relationship Manager or VIP Support.

PHP 8.1 Update Timeline

PHP 8.0 will lose security support on November 26, 2023. VIP prioritizes your application’s security, and we are committed to ensuring all customers have updated to PHP 8.1 ahead of this date. Below, you will find VIP’s PHP 8.1 update timeline.

PHP 8.1 Timeline for Non-Updated Environments

Monday, October 30, 2023

Monday, November 13, 2023

Earlier PHP Version Options Removed
The option to select PHP version 7.4 (deprecated) and 8.0 is removed from the software management tool.

Sunday, November 26, 2023

PHP 8.0 End of Life
Security support for PHP 8.0 ends.

How can VIP help?

Tooling
Your application’s software version can be managed directly by you in the VIP Dashboard.

Partners
Could your team benefit from experienced, extra hands to address this update? We’d be happy to connect you to one of our Featured Partner agencies who can assist via a short-term engagement. Our Partnerships team would be happy to recommend a partner who would be a good fit. If you’re interested in being connected with a partner, please submit the form on this page, and our Partnerships team will be in touch.

Documentation
We have helpful documentation available to guide you through preparing your application code for a PHP update.

PHP 8.2

In case you missed it, VIP is pleased to announce the release of PHP 8.2. If your team would love to stay ahead of the PHP update curve, we recommend testing and updating to PHP 8.2 this year. This means your team would not need to tackle another PHP update until late 2025!

Working Together: The Path to PHP 8.0

In May, we announced that PHP 8.0 was now available on WordPress VIP environments. Since then, we’ve been excited to see many customers testing this version on their child environments, while other customers have completed the update to PHP 8.0 on their production sites.

WordPress VIP wants to ensure that every customer is supported along their PHP 8.0 update path and that no one scrambles toward the finish line. To aid your planning, take note of the key dates below. The timeline provides high-level milestones for WordPress VIP customers to keep everyone on track and mitigate potential risks as early as possible.

WordPress VIP Update Timeline

While Nov. 28, 2022 is the date PHP 7.4 will stop receiving security updates, WordPress VIP will begin updating any customer not yet on PHP 8.0 on Monday, Nov. 15, in an effort to minimize risk of security vulnerabilities. Please review the timeline below, and reach out to your Technical Account Manager or our support team with questions.

MONDAY, AUG. 1, 2022

All new environments are created on PHP 8.0

Existing customers begin creating any new environments on PHP 8.0. If you have an upcoming project in preparation, work with your Technical Account Manager, who will help you incorporate this into your planning. If you have questions or concerns, create a ticket with our support team. If you’re a Premier customer, your account team is already aware of this timeline and can also answer questions.
*New customers have already begun launching their sites on PHP 8.0.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 15, 2022

Customer check-in: All non-updated customers

Customers who have not yet updated all environments to PHP 8.0 receive communication inquiring about a target migration date. The goal is to help us understand potential risks and make sure you’re on your way to a successful update.

MONDAY, OCT. 17, 2022

30 days from deadline: Customers planned for VIP update

WordPress VIP begins formalizing a plan to update customers who have not updated to PHP 8.0 and who have not provided a target date for updating in advance of Nov. 15. We will reach out to customers with next steps and flag potential risks.

Note: Customers updated by WordPress VIP will not have a rollback option. Issues related to the update will be the responsibility of the customer to address and solve.

TUESDAY, NOV. 1, 2022

Last day to roll back to PHP 7.4

Our goal is to have all WordPress VIP customers updated to PHP 8.0 before Nov. 1. After this date, working with your teams on post-update issues will be the priority.

TUESDAY, NOV. 15, 2022

WordPress VIP updates any customer applications not yet on PHP 8.0.

How to prepare your WordPress site for PHP 8

If you’re just getting started, but have more questions than answers, we’ve got you covered. Our resident PHP expert, Gary Jones, Engineering Lead for Premier customers, has written a comprehensive outline covering everything from a PHP 8.0 overview and getting started, to looking for compatibility issues and considerations around PHP 8.1. Even if you have a finalized PHP 8.0 plan, it’s a great resource to review to make sure you’re covered.

How to prepare your WordPress VIP site for PHP 8.0

Related VIP Documentation:

Prepare application code for a PHP version upgrade

VIP Code Analysis Bot