WordPress 7.0’s PHP Rules: Check This Before Upgrading

WordPress 7.0 finally did the overdue thing: it dropped support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3, making PHP 7.4 the floor and strongly nudging everyone toward PHP 8.3+. The change was announced on make.wordpress.org well in advance, and yet I’d bet money a scary share of shared-hosting sites will discover it the hard way. Before you hit update, run through this WordPress 7 PHP requirements checklist — it’s the same one I use before touching any client site.

First: Find Out What You’re Actually Running

In wp-admin, go to Tools → Site Health → Info → Server and read the PHP version. Takes thirty seconds and instantly sorts you into one of three buckets:

• PHP 8.1+ (this site runs 8.1): you’re fine for 7.0. Consider 8.3 for the speed bump, not out of necessity.
• PHP 7.4-8.0: you’ll technically run, but you’re on borrowed time — those versions stopped getting security fixes years ago. Upgrade the PHP before the CMS.
• PHP 7.2-7.3: stop. Do not update WordPress until PHP is sorted, or you’ll be debugging a white screen at midnight.

The WordPress 7 PHP Requirements Checklist

1. Backup first, opinions later. Full files + database, stored off the server. Non-negotiable.
2. Audit your oldest plugins. The danger isn’t WordPress — it’s that plugin from 2019 using syntax PHP 8 removed. Check each plugin’s “tested up to” and last-updated date. Anything abandoned: find a replacement before upgrade day, not after. (My plugin audit checklist pairs well here — audit for safety and compatibility in one pass.)
3. Check your theme. Custom and niche themes are the usual PHP-8 casualties — deprecated functions, undefined array keys. If your theme hasn’t seen an update in years, test it hard.
4. Switch PHP on staging first. Most cPanel hosts let you flip PHP versions per-site in one click. Clone the site (or use your host’s staging), flip to 8.3 there, click through every important page with WP_DEBUG on, and read the warnings.
5. Then upgrade in order: PHP first, confirm stable, WordPress 7.0 second. One variable at a time — when something breaks, you’ll know which change did it.

What Actually Breaks (From Experience)

The greatest hits I’ve seen on shared hosting: ancient contact-form plugins throwing fatal errors on PHP 8’s stricter type handling, theme functions.php files calling functions removed years ago, and — sneakiest of all — sites that look fine but fill the error log with deprecation warnings that become fatals in the next PHP release. The log is your friend. Read it once after upgrading.

The Payoff

This isn’t just compliance homework. PHP 8.3 is meaningfully faster than 7.4 — real response-time gains on the same hardware, which feeds directly into the Core Web Vitals work from my speed checklist. Free performance, better security, and a WordPress that stops nagging you. Just do the checklist first, and upgrade like a professional instead of a gambler.