The prospect of Joomla 4 should raise your awareness of the need to upgrade to PHP 7.3 in your hosting environment.
Joomla 4 requires PHP 7.1 as a minimum requirement, but this version will no longer receive security updates from 01.12.2019. Most hosting providers have been offering PHP 7.2 and PHP 7.3 in their packages for a long time and it should be fairly easy to change your PHP version in the control centre of your hosting.
There are four good reasons why you should not put off upgrading PHP.
PHP 7.3 is better
Of course, it's easy to say, but PHP 7.3 actually means a performance boost that delivers your website more than twice as fast (compared to PHP 5.6) while using more than 50% less memory. Of course, PHP 7.3 is also more secure and offers many more options for developers too.
Joomla 4 brings new features
Joomla 4 will introduce huge improvements for users and developers. Cleaned up code, a renewed framework, great new features and much more. Bootstrap 4 will be implemented in the core, there will be 2 new templates (frontend and backend), the new media manager offers improved functions.
Joomla 4 is still in development and a release is planned for the end of 2019. The list of features will be expanded until then.
Renewed framework
The renewed framework (version 2.0) that comes with Joomla 4 has some important improvements. The database API natively supports prepared statements, which represents a significant improvement in security. The storage of encrypted data is now possible with a more modular keychain component. Command line tools can be created better and more securely thanks to the new console component.
PHP 7.3 is more secure and officially supported
Versions older than PHP 7.1 are no longer provided with security updates. If a security vulnerability is found in PHP 7.0 or 5.6, no one will fix it and your website will be vulnerable. On the other hand, if you use the latest PHP 7.x version, you can be sure that potential problems will be fixed, and security updates will be available very quickly.
Since PHP 7 is the new major version, it will be supported for a long time (including minor releases), so your Joomla 4 website can easily run on it until 2025.
But, but... What if I can't upgrade to PHP 7.3?
Joomla 3.9 will continue to be supported for two years after the release of Joomla! 3.10 (which will be the prerequisite for upgrading to Joomla! 4.x). This means that you can comfortably run your Joomla 3 website until the end of 2021, even though you will miss out on the great new features and benefits of Joomla 4. But let's be honest: if your hosting provider doesn't support PHP 7.3, now would be the time to switch to another hosting company. I would be happy to advise you!
