[General] PHP4 End of Life

As was mentioned in a previous post, PHP 4 officially went end-of-life on Friday, August 8. This means that the PHP designers are no longer going to be issuing bug fixes for PHP 4 and it is effectively a dead language at this point. The PHP designers did release PHP 4.4.9 on Friday, which a culmination of all the outstanding bug and security fix in the PHP 4 branch. For more information on this see the PHP website.

Because PHP 4 is now end-of-life, users that are still running websites that require PHP 4 really need to be switched to PHP 5. We will be checking all of the servers to find out what accounts are still using PHP 4 and you will receive a notice concerning this. If you are running a script that still requires PHP 4, the first thing you need to do is check to see if you are running the most recent and up-to-date version of that script. Keeping your scripts up-to-date is important from a security point of view because it helps to prevent your website from being hacked and defaced. If you are running the latest version of the script and it still requires PHP 4, then you need to discuss this with the developer of the script. PHP developers should be aware that PHP 4 was going end-of-life this year and should have been making arrangements to resolve any issues with their scripts. Personally, I would think twice before trusting a script from a developer that was unaware of the PHP4 end-of-life issue.

We wanted everyone to be aware of this. From a security standpoint, we have to enforce the security models that are advised from the PHP designers. The PHP designers are saying that everyone should move towards PHP5. While we are not going to be cutting off access to PHP4 any time soon, it does not mean that we will continue to offer PHP4 indefinitely. Arrangements need to be made that adjust your scripts to work with PHP5.

Steven