Old Perch installs and PHP 7

It’s great to see lots of web hosting companies updating their servers to offer PHP 7 support. This is largely in response to PHP 5 security updates ending at the end of 2018. If you’re currently running a server with PHP 5, you can expect that your host will want to update it very shortly.

The current version of Perch works better than ever on PHP 7, offering speed and security improvements.

If you or your clients run versions of Perch or Runway older than 2.8.34 (the final release of Perch 2 from 2016) then you’ll need to update in order for the software to keep working on PHP 7. If you run an old version and your host upgrades to a new version of PHP, you’ll not be able to log in until you update Perch.

Perch and Runway updates can be found for free in your Perch Account, and we have full update instructions as always.

We’re improving Perch and Runway all the time with fixes and stability enhancements, so it’s worth periodically updating your sites to keep them recent. You don’t need to be cutting edge, but keeping a site moving forward in small steps every so often saves the bigger and more nerve-racking job of jumping from a very old version to a new one.

If you need to update your site but don’t have the skills or availability to do that yourself, the Perch Registered Developers listing would be the perfect place to look for help.