What PHP 8.0 extensions have to be included for J! websites to operate? Topic is solved

[mitokat]

We are setting up a new server running php 8.0 for a few Joomla 3.0 sites which will then be upgraded in the next few months to 4.0. Having lots of issues with the copied over sites, as in they do not work. So this brings me to my question, what php extensions have to be added to the regular 8.0 installation for the sites to run. The copied sites are showing an error and I even tried a fresh install of the last versions of 3.0 and 4.0 but nothing worked. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

[Per Yngve Berg]

J3.0 does not run on php 8 as it's 10 years old.

Both 3.0 and 4.0 is outdated. Current versions is 3.10.11 and 4.2.2

[leolam]

J3.0 does not run on php 8 as it's 10 years old.

Sorry for the late reply but that is utterly wrong. Don't provide the wrong info (just for users who have the question now in November 2022)

Leo

[gws]

I think per meant J3.0.0 does not run on php8 not the latest J3.10.11

[leolam]

I think per meant J3.0.0 does not run on php8 not the latest J3.10.11

I think mistaken!

As per Joomla technical guidelines: Technical Requirements Joomla 3 (version requirements shown today 18th November 2022) runs on PHP8. No version exclusions are made. (unless the guidelines are wrong....'which could be....')

That is a fact (official Joomla guidelines)

Leo

[Per Yngve Berg]

Have you read the footnotes? It says the minimum requirement to run php 7 is J3.5

Unfortunately there is no specification for php 8.

[leolam]

So you conclude that the official posted guidelines are incorrect!

Official Joomla guidelines are PHP8. (I am fully aware of the posted remarks all over Joomla re. PHP8 etc. but talk to your fellow Joomla team members and have the guidelines adjusted if YOU think they are wrong)

Leo

[sozzled]

@leolam and @mitokat: this shouldn't be too complicated but forum users often have to read the fine print.

The technical requirements article is not well written but it does contain some help.

The requirements state that PHP 8.0—but we don't know which version of PHP 8.0 we're discussing—is "recommended" for both J! 3.x and J! 4.x. There are a few caveats in making this recommendation:

1) The footnotes that @Per mentioned state:

PHP 5.3.1 is required for versions 3.0 through 3.2. At 3.3, the minimum is raised to PHP 5.3.10. Joomla! versions 3.5 and later are compatible with PHP 7.

Well, that's a load of rubbish. Anything less than the last release of J! 3.10—viz. 3.10.11—is unsupported. This means that if people are using J! 3.10.9 or less they're taking "pot luck" that their website will operate with any version of PHP.

2) PHP 5.x is pretty well dead and if people expect to operate J! 3.x with PHP 5.x they're not very wise in doing that. I would not recommend using PHP 5.x except in a quarantined testing environment.

3) While an unadorned, freshly-minted J! website will probably operate with PHP 7.x or PHP 8.0, there's a 50-50 chance that if people install a third-party extension these extensions have not been maintained by their developers and will cause problems.

4) J! 4.x may work (out of the box) with PHP 7.2.5 but it should work with a higher version of PHP but, even then, third-party extensions could compromise that. I've written an article for the Joomla Community Magazine that will be published in a few days' time that discusses the future of J! website with the currently-available releases of PHP. I'm not writing this to "advertise"; I'm just saying it's something people may be interested in reading at their leisure.

5) J! 3.0.0 thru J! 3.4.8 will not work with PHP 7.x or higher; full stop, end of story. Don't even think about trying to use the Hathor administrator template with PHP 7.x!

6) In addition to the so-called "technical requirements" document, there are other factors to be considered in setting up PHP. These additional requirements are documented at https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Optional_T ... quirements and https://docs.joomla.org/J4.x:Optional_T ... quirements and additionally I would recommend setting these minimum PHP quotas for J! 3 or J! 4:



7) People also need to enable the PHP extension allow_url_fopen() if they want to be able to update from one version of J! to another. This isn't mentioned anywhere.

8) J! 3.x will not work with PHP 8.1¹. J! 4.x may work with PHP 8.1, bearing in mind the cautionary notes I've listed above. The majority of extensions written for J! are likely to fail after installation, not because they're incompatible with PHP 8.1 but because they do not adhere to the coding standards revised at the time when J! 3.8 was released.

9) Just because PHP 7.x will be at end of life in a couple of weeks is no reason, by itself, to be worry about changing from PHP 7.x to PHP 8.x. The change to PHP 8 could cause more headaches than "worrying" about the potential withdrawal of PHP 7 support on people's hosted platforms.

----
Note:

¹ It may be possible to run J! 3.x with PHP 8.1 if people set the error reporting level to "None" but that is unwise. I do not agree with people who suggest they should operate their websites with error detection disabled. I run my websites with the error reporting level set to "Default"; if you run your websites with error reporting turned off that's your business.

[Webdongle]

You do the upgrade/migration on localhost with Wamp as php can be changed on the fly.

[sozzled]

Thanks, @Webdongle but we're not discussing Wampserver software. People can change their PHP version "on the fly", as you say, if their webhost provides the means to do that. Most reputable webhosts offer the capability to change the current PHP version to something different. Regardless of whether we're discussing a commercially-operated webhosting platform or a PC-hosted Apache-MySql-PHP stack (e.g. Wampserver, LAMP, XAMPP, etc.) people still need to pay attention to the PHP extensions they need to enable as well as the PHP quota settings they may need to adjust.

The question asked by the OP (which may have been answered satisfactorily) is "What PHP 8.0 extensions have to be included for J! websites to operate?" The question was not "What PC-hosted environment allows me to change PHP 'on the fly'?" If that had been the original question then your comment may have been relevant to the discussion but that wasn't the question, was it?

My involvement in this discussion was to help mediate the exchange between Leo and Per and to help the OP and other people looking for information about the technical requirements involved in setting up their websites on the internet. Wampserver is not suitable platform to set up any website—whether it's a J! one or something else—for production use on the internet. I agree that Wampserver is probably the best of the PC-hosted packages that people might use when they're starting of to design a site, or for "laboratory" testing conditions, but I think you're drawing a long bow trying to connect Wampserver with a commercially-operated environment unless you would like to write a few paragraphs to explain how Wampserver might be helpful.

I don't know if we're even discussing migrating from J! 3.x to J! 4.x. Many people wouldn't know about how to install a PC-hosted AMP stack and they will migrate their sites from J! 3.x to J! 4.x using the facilities provided by their webhosting company. I have migrated from J! 3.x to J! 4.x using both approaches: the PC-hosted environment as well as the commercially-hosted environment. Both approaches work. If people need to install Wampserver just to migrate from J! 3.x to J! 4.x (as people could infer from your comment) then it does not speak favourably about commercially-hosted platforms, does it? Further, it could be taken to mean that commercially-hosted platforms are not the place to perform these upgrades. I think you need to add a few extra sentences to qualify your blanket statement about using Wampserver.

[Webdongle]

... Many people wouldn't know about how to install a PC-hosted AMP stack ...

The Op said
"We are setting up a new server running php 8.0 for a few Joomla 3.0 sites which will then be upgraded in the next few months to 4.0"
Therefore he will easily install a localhost on his PC that has several php versions.

The OP also said
"I even tried a fresh install of the last versions of 3.0 and 4.0 but nothing worked"
So as you well know the Title of a thread does not necessarily reflect the answers that are needed.

Also there is more than one way to approach a problem not just your way.