mysites.guru reporting incorrect PHP version Topic is solved

[AMurray]

Hi,not sure where to post this otherwise.

While I wait on a response from Phil Taylor (mysites.guru), I'm wondering if anyone else using this service has noticed the PHP version reported as "out of date" is actually the current version as reported by Joomla (the PHP version plugin 'quickicon').

For my own sites, the PHP version reported is 8.1.15, both in Joomla, and in my web hosting (SiteGround). So mysites.guru is recognising that version but just not flagging it as the current 8.1.x release.

Additionally, the official PHP.net site doesn't seem to list 8.1.15 as its official new release, the last one listed is 8.1.14.

Just curious, not a critical problem.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

MySites and joomla read the PHP_VERSION constant

This problem is the ever pathetic siteground PHP fork UltraPHP (which is not the official PHP version) or a bug in their platform

UltraPHP is pathetic and has many many known bugs and has to be disabled to use scripts like mySites.

PHP 8.1.15 has not yet been released.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Open a ticket at SiteGround and ask them what they are doing and which PHP your account is configured to.

[AMurray]

Thanks Phil, I also received your email.

Understood about the SG Hosting and UltraPHP - will make contact.

Just noticed, however, that WAMPServer are also offering v8.1.5 and v8.2.2 (neither are official releases) as add-on modules but not the actualversions 8.1.4 and 8.2.1 as per php.net.

XAMPP is behind with PHP 8.1.2 being in its latest bundled version.

Thanks again.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

At the time of writing the following are the officially released versions at php.net

8.2.1 - Released 5th Jan 2023
8.1.14 - Released 5th Jan 2023
8.0.27 - Released 5th Jan 2023

All PHP 7 versions are end of life and should not be used.
PHP 8.0 series is currently receiving security fixes only and should not be used in new projects.
PHP 8.1 series will enter security fixes only on 25th November 2023
PHP 8.2 series is the main series that most sites should now be using - however Joomla 3 has known issues on PHP 8.2 as the Joomla project are yers behind with testing Joomla source with PHP 8.x and racing with every release to make it "more" compatible with PHP 8.2. Even Joomla 4 has known PHP 8.2 issues.

PHP 8.1.15 tag was cut by the PHP Project in their GitHub repo yesterday at 15:11PM UTC - here: https://github.com/php/php-src/releases/tag/php-8.1.15

Im assuming Siteground have some automation based on the tags, and not the releases, as a marketing thing to "be the first" to provide new versions.

As a tag has now been created, it might be reasonable to assume that the official PHP project are preparing a release of 8.1.15 today - although there is no other evidence for that.

Joomla and mySites.guru are correctly reporting the version your site is running, based on the PHP_VERSION constant.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

The fact is PHP is open source, the source code is available here https://github.com/php/php-src/

I could download the source code, change the version number and publish PHP 10.10.10 today if I liked. That would be perfectly ok.

However meaningless as the pubic would not know what 10.10.10 contains, against the officially released changelog, unless I told them that 10.10.10 release had been modified to do A B and C.

I personally run the very latest nightly commit of PHP, self-compiled, into a docker container each night - so some days my development stack is broken. I dont run "an official version" but then I know what Im doing. Webhosts cannot be trusted to "know what they are doing" as SiteGround prove, by calling their own closed source product UltraPHP and not giving full details on what they have changed from the official source code to make their private product.

The only way the world can be SURE what they are getting, is to use the official PHP versions, with the official version numbers from php.net.

So, to go back to the title of this thread, mySites.guru is NOT incorrectly reporting the PHP version - mySites.guru and Joomla are CORRECTLY reading, and outputting the value of the PHP_VERSION constant, as defined by whoever built and compiled your servers custom version of PHP.

PHP 8.1.15 - at the time of writing this - has not been officially released by the php.net project, but there is a git tag to that version number.

Unless your webhost tells you what they did to compile the PHP version installed on your server, you can only assume that its the tagged commit from php.net, modified by Siteground or not, and compiled themselves and installed by Siteground.

But without SiteGround telling you, you have to assume. Their PHP 8.1.15 might be PHP 10.10.10 but with someone changing the version number... no one knows what they do to the source code

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

PHP 8.1.5 and PHP 8.2.2 were released yesterday, 2nd Feb 2023.

https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php