To protect yourself from malware or malfunctioning features
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WordPress is built around the PHP scripting language, so it’s pretty essential to have an up-to-date version of it installed on your web server. It’s easy to keep WordPress itself up-to-date, but core technologies (like PHP) aren’t always in sync with your installed version of WordPress.
This is especially true for DIY web servers that you set up yourself. If the server hosting your site isn’t updated, PHP probably isn’t either, leaving your site open to exploits or broken functionality. That means you’ll need to update PHP to keep everything running. Here’s how to update PHP in WordPress.
From time to time, the minimum supported version of PHP that WordPress supports changes. You can view the current minimum version on the WordPress website, but at the time of publication, WordPress supports at least PHP 7.3 or higher.
