Over the course of the next few months, we will be updating our shared hosting servers from using PHP v5.6 as default to PHP v7.2. Any domains set to use the default version of PHP will be updated during this process.
The upgrade from v5.6 to v7.2 is required as v5.6 is now end of life and will no longer receive security updates, whereas v7.2 will be receiving these updates until the end of 2021. Additionally, v7.2 is still been actively updated with new features being added. Over time, v7.2 will be required in order to run most popular CMS such as WordPress or Joomla. PHP v7.2 also provides a large performance increase over v5.6 with benchmarks showing it to be twice as fast in some cases.
If the upgrade to v7.2 causes any issues with your website, you will still be able to downgrade back to v5.6. Please note if the upgrade has caused any issues then your websites code is out of date and we strongly recommend contacting your developer to ensure your site is brought up to date. If you are working to update your plugins, you can use a plugin like PHP Compatibility Checker to check which plugins are/aren’t compatible with v7.2. Having out of date software on your hosting account greatly increases the risk of your hosting account getting hacked into.
If you have a cPanel hosting account, information on how to change your PHP version can be found here.
If you have a Plesk hosting account, it is not possible for you to downgrade the version of PHP yourself. You would need to open a ticket with the team and they will take care of it for you.