how to upgrade PHP without reinstalling of current xampp

[enticer]

I am getting the following error after upgrading J to 3.8.3. I am searching on how I could upgrade my PHP to address this error without reinstalling my XAMPP.

"Error
We have detected that your server is using PHP 5.5.38 which is obsolete and no longer receives official security updates by its developers. The Joomla! Project recommends upgrading your site to PHP 5.6 or later which will receive security updates at least until 2018-12-31. Please ask your host to make PHP 5.6 or a later version the default version for your site. If your host is already PHP 5.6 ready please enable PHP 5.6 on your site's root and 'administrator' directories – typically you can do this yourself through a tool in your hosting control panel, but it's best to ask your host if you are unsure."

protostar 1.0 | J 3.8.3 | xampp control panel v3.2.2

[leolam]

Just upgrade your PHP version in Xampp to PHP 7.1

Leo

[enticer]

hi leo you mean upgrade the xampp itself? is there a way to only upgrade the PHP?

i tried following the below but not really working after. Apache was not restarting after stopping the service.

Simplest method to upgrade PHP in XAMPP:

Download latest portable version of XAMPP.
Extract the archive(not where XAMPP already installed).
Copy the PHP folder from the extracted archive.
Keep back up of PHP folder which is in installed XAMPP directory. You can backup it like changing the PHP folder name to PHP-old or like PHP-version-number
Paste the PHP folder which you copied from the extracted archive.
Replace the php.ini file with your backup folder php.ini file in case you have changed the default settings earlier.
That's all, start/restart the server.

source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/215 ... or-windows

[AMurray]

@enticer:
It looks like you have to reinstall XAMPP each time, but that seems complicated (I had issues with XAMPP where re-installation essentially wiped out my MySQL DB's and it took time and effort to restore backups. Maybe I missed some step along with way, but I have since swapped to WAMPServer, and find it easy to add PHP versions to the AMP stack.

You just download the one you want (separate component from the actual WAMPServer application itself), save it into the WAMP folder, then install it - it self-extracts the files to the correct folders. When you restart Apache, you are presented with the new version you can then select to use - and it doesn't uninstall earlier versions which is handy for testing PHP applications on older PHP like 5.6 or 7.0 etc.

[enticer]

Thanks AMurray.
will continue to seek about it and check WAMPServer as well.

[JAVesey]

Just upgrade your PHP version in Xampp to PHP 7.1

This

PHP 7.1.12 is the latest stable version released at the beginning of December 2017. It might not have made it into current AMP (WAMP, XAMPP, MAMP) products yet, though, e.g. MAMP is at 7.1.8

PHP 7.2.0 was released at the same time, but I'd stick with 7.1 (or, for testing purposes, match the version that your live site uses) until you're sure that your local Joomla installation runs error free on 7.2.0

[enticer]

Uh i will try again using 7.1 because the one i did following the instruction below was php 7.2, you think it will make a difference?

Simplest method to upgrade PHP in XAMPP:

Download latest portable version of XAMPP.
Extract the archive(not where XAMPP already installed).
Copy the PHP folder from the extracted archive.
Keep back up of PHP folder which is in installed XAMPP directory. You can backup it like changing the PHP folder name to PHP-old or like PHP-version-number
Paste the PHP folder which you copied from the extracted archive.
Replace the php.ini file with your backup folder php.ini file in case you have changed the default settings earlier.
That's all, start/restart the server.

source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/215 ... or-windows

[JAVesey]

Uh i will try again using 7.1 because the one i did following the instruction below was php 7.2, you think it will make a difference?

PHP 7.2.0 is about a month old and is the first release of the 7.2 series. It is possible that not all code for all extensions that you might be using will have been updated yet and there might be a few errors and (harmless) warnings thrown. Only you can say for sure whether your site is fully working with this version. If it is then there might be some benefits to using it.

The conservative/safer option is to use the latest version of PHP 7.1 series for a little while yet, as per Leolam's recommendation.