change php version in cpanel

Introducing the PHP Selector

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that we announced that we had PHP 5.3 services available. Since then however, PHP 5.4 and even 5.5 have been released, and it wasn’t long before we started getting requests for hosting with these versions of PHP on our systems. These were requests we could not grant because we did not have servers set aside for those versions.

In addition to that, anyone who wanted to move from one version of PHP to another had to put in a ticket to our Support people, and get the entire account migrated to another physical server with the right version of PHP. During the migration, the site was prone to being offline for hours at a time while propagation occurred.

Not anymore!

We now have installed across all our servers a new feature that allows you to pick the version of PHP that you want to use at any time. The icon is named ‘Select PHP Version‘ and you can find it in the ‘advanced’ section of your cPanel right now!

When you first go there, it will tell you you’re running the ‘native’ version of PHP. For some of you, that will be PHP 5.2, and for others, it’ll be 5.3. That will depend on the server you’re on. If you change the version through, you’ll get access to all kinds of new options. First, you’ll be able to set any and all extensions you need or want for your account:

phpselect2

And if you click that ‘show php settings’ button, you can see this:

phpselect1

This lets you set settings you’d normally only configure using a php.ini file.

Just a note though: If you use a php.ini file, it will interfere with the php selector’s ability to set php settings! Please use only one method or the other to control your PHP environment settings.

Also a word of warning to phpmotion users: Do not use the selector unless you plan on reinstalling phpmotion by hand! Our phpmotion installer assumes ‘native’ php, and PHPmotion requires a specific version of PHP in order to decode properly or it just won’t run.

We have also added documentation in our knowledgebase to answer any additional questions our customers may have regarding the new PHP selector.  The PHP selector is available across all of our shared hosting servers and accessible to every customer through their cPanel.