PHP Upgrade Warning

I totally agree. This should not be allowed on free plugins. +1

“… should not be allowed…. ”

The folks who make ‘free’ plugins can do whatever they want as you’re not paying them to support their time, effort, changes, etc.

The warnings are there as many code developers are ending support for old ‘end of life’ versions of PHP like 5.2, 5.3 (and arguably 5.4). Nobody should be running modern versions of WP and plugins on anything below 5.6 with opcache, both for performance and security issues.

Basically many people who use ‘free’ plugins are stupid and don’t RTFM, and so developers are not out of line to force people to take notice that the plugin might stop working if you don’t upgrade to new version.

See: https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-4-5/

WP 4.8 is optimized for PHP 7 (and 5.6.30 etc).

Upshot: if you want your site to be secure and for Yoast SEO and other plugins to work properly moving forward you need to get past using decade old version of PHP.

Release history
Version Release date Supported until
5.2 2 November 2006 6 January 2011
5.3 30 June 2009 14 August 2014
5.4 1 March 2012 3 September 2015
5.5 20 June 2013 21 July 2016

End of Life Dates
The most recent branches to reach end of life status are:
5.5: 21 Jul 2016
5.4: 3 Sep 2015

I disagree with it being something that should be disallowed on free, or even premium plugins. They build this stuff, and they should be able to do what they want. But I do think there should be limits that developers put on themselves, and not allowing a notice as large as this to be dismissed, or even simply collapsed, is not cool.

The folks being this plugin have thrown notice after notice in our faces for years, all with options to dismiss. This one should be no different.

And @neotrope, you make some valid points in your statement, but calling those who use free plugins stupid is a little harsh.

Hi, Troy
note I said “some people” using free plugins, not “all people.”

If you follow this and other plugin forums, unfortunately there is quite a bit of “why doesn’t it make magic toast?” queries here, which can sometimes make it harder for the rest of us trying to sort out legitimate issues with new version launches from the “I’m running WP 3 and my plugin stopped working…” questions. That was what I was referring to, although not specifically.

I also see a lot of people bitching about why it doesn’t write their content for them and put them to bed with warm milk, and you suck, and I’m going to use something else since you won’t wash my hair stuff — it’s free, use it or don’t; read the friendly manual … was kinda my rant there.

Oops another useless rant.

But fair point. I shouldn’t call people stupid, as that’s stupid too! ??

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by neotrope.

Thank you for your candid feedback. A request is currently open and under development to make the notice dismissible for a period of time.

If you would like to follow the progress of the request, you can do that here: https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/7477