PHP 8 Compatibility

Hi @richieps, thanks for dropping us a message regarding PHP 8.

Our QA team is currently working to ensure that our plugin is compatible with PHP 8 in a variety of environments so I cannot commit to a specific release date with full compatibility on the forums as some of our changes may depend on additional WordPress development also. In our December 3rd Wordfence update, we added a dismissable notice to warn users who’ve already upgraded that there may be compatibility issues. Many users may be able to use WordPress 5.6+ and Wordfence without issue, but should still be mindful there may be undiscovered bugs that could cause problems.

At the moment, we are not generally recommending making the jump, but as I stated before, there’s no guarantee your site will experience any problems. Here’s a helpful article we wrote about PHP 8 and our opinions on upgrading to it right now: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/11/php-8-what-wordpress-users-need-to-know/

I’m aware the latest version of WordPress is 5.7.1, but 5.6 is the version number when PHP 8 started to appear prominently on the release notes:

WordPress 5.6 is intended to be “beta compatible with PHP 8” according to the November 18 WordPress dev chat. This means that most core WordPress functionality will work, but unexpected bugs may still occur for some time, even without the presence of additional plugins or themes. WordPress has called for additional testing with PHP 8 in order to find and fix as many remaining bugs as possible.

We have also discussed PHP 8 and what it means for WordPress/Wordfence on Wordfence Live, which you may find helpful. On new site builds with minimal plugins we think being fully up-to-date could be an advantage going forward, but you should still be prepared to potentially experience some edge-case issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDbnvuJmPc&t=2550s

I hope this helps you out!

Thanks,

Peter.

Hi @wfpeter

Thank you very much for such a comprehensive response, it is much appreciated.

Keep up the good work.

Richie

Hi @richieps,

No problem at all, best of luck with your PHP version choice and if you have any other Wordfence questions in future by all means start a new topic and we’ll always be glad to help out.

Peter.

Is there any update as to if PHP 8 is supported in the Wordfence plugin? PHP is ending active support for 7.4 in 26 days and security support in 1 year.

Any update on this?

Per https://www.wordfence.com/help/advanced/system-requirements/ the Wordfence plugin does support PHP 8.

We do not recommend using PHP 8.0 or 8.1 on production sites yet, as they have significant changes from previous versions, which may change the existing behavior of WordPress, plugins, and themes. Wordfence can run on PHP 8, but other plugins and themes may cause conflicts that do not occur on earlier PHP versions. Plugin and theme conflicts or other issues that previously caused warnings can now cause fatal errors instead.