PHP8 Web Hosting Comparison UK

PHP 8x - What Does the New Standard Promise?

On the internet, the PHP Hypertext Processor is by far the most important programming language for creating dynamic web pages, regardless of whether the source code is on a web space, a VPS Hosting, or Dedicated Server.

After more than four years of development, the responsible programmers released the latest version PHP 8 in November 2020 as the successor to PHP 7. It is expected to quickly establish itself as the de facto standard. This is due in part to the fact that each version upgrade brings numerous benefits such as new features, improved performance, and security.

What's Behind the Leap to Version 8?

Like software, operating systems, and other programming languages, PHP is in constant development, which includes several aspects. The most important ones are:

• Closing security vulnerabilities
• Adding new features
• Improving performance
• Fixing bugs and other errors
• Streamlining and optimizing the code

PHP's roadmap does not set fixed deadlines for version upgrades, but minor updates usually occur on an annual basis. Typically, the support duration for all new releases is three years - it is essential to switch before this period ends, as critical security vulnerabilities will no longer be addressed after that point.

Since support for the last PHP 7 version 7.4.33 expired in November 2022, transitioning to PHP 8 should be done as soon as possible. The use of outdated PHP versions should only be considered within the scope of PHP Extended Support.

What Are the Benefits of PHP 8?

Up to PHP 7, the programming language was interpreted and executed line by line. With PHP 8, a Just-in-Time Compiler (JIT) is now available for the first time, compiling parts of the code during runtime and providing them almost in real-time like a cache. This reduces processing time by up to 50% when this option is used. This primarily applies to CPU-intensive calculations, but even without JIT, the speed increase compared to PHP 7.4 is about ten percent. Additionally, PHP 8 offers new features that facilitate clean coding and help avoid errors. Some of these are:

• Named arguments or parameters for passing data to functions
• "static" as a new return type alongside "self" and "parent"
• Union types for type binding with dynamic variables
• Adding metadata through attributes instead of doc blocks
• Automatic implementation of an interface through "stringable interface"

Although these advantages are initially mainly used by programmers, they also greatly benefit users. They ensure higher efficiency, performance, and security on a website.

What to consider when transitioning to PHP 8?

As with any major release, this time also sees the removal of some functions, most of which were already marked as "Deprecated" or outdated in the previous versions PHP 7.2 to 7.4. Therefore, there should be no issues with current code - however, using outdated software or plugins may lead to incompatibilities. Additionally, Microsoft has announced that they will no longer provide Windows support for PHP 8 or higher. The PHP developers have taken on this task themselves.

The Adoption of PHP 8

After the release of PHP 8, it took some time for this version of the scripting language to be available for all operating systems and Linux distributions through official packages. In web hosting, the transition was automatic for users. Those using their own VPS Hosting or Dedicated Server had to wait for the update release and then could install it through manual or automatic updates. To test PHP 8 for compatibility early on, manual installation in a test environment was recommended. PHP 8 has now gained widespread adoption and is currently the recommended version of the scripting language.