davidvee

Hello @lydianas. Since the plugin is performing “local linting” some plugins / themes will time out in some environments as you noted. To help avoid this we recommend you run this plugin in a local version of WP. You can check out localwp.com (free) for a quick way to create a local version of WP.

As for your question on if your site is ready to be upgraded to the latest version of PHP, you can try to run the plugin on a local copy of WP as mentioned above, but at the end of the day this plugin only surfaces PHP linting errors which may be a problem for your site.

You can also ask your host to load a copy of your site onto a server with a current version of PHP to test the copy to see if it works as expected. This plugin can give you clues as to things that might break, but at the end of the day you’ll still need to review / these the site manually when it’s on a server with updated PHP.

BTW, if you’re a WP Engine or Flywheel customer, we give you a few tools to do this testing and our 24×7 support can also help you directly.

Good luck!

Hmm. That’s a good question. Would you mind reaching out to our support directly by opening a chat once you log into my.wpengine.com so we can do a little troubleshooting and help you resolve this?

I’m happy to provide an update. We experienced a snag when one of the underlying libraries received an update which introduced a slew of breaking changes which would affect updating the plugi for 7.4. We’re working through those unforeseen updates now. Sorry all for the delay here.

Hello all. Sorry for the radio silence here.

We have been working through some blockers on the release. Specifically, we’re working through an update to PHP CodeSniffer (dependency) which has caused breaking changes.

We’re currently working through those breaks. You can follow the progress here…

https://github.com/wpengine/phpcompat/pull/251

Hello @ilmigo. Sorry for the delay on this front. After a ton of research on what is causing certain scans to hang, we’ve determined that the plugin is hanging most often due to environment conditions on the servers where the scans are being run vs. the plugin itself or certain types of code it scans causing the problem.

This means that there is no clean way to code around the problem within the plugin. We’re currently exploring options for “side linting” (e.g. offloading the linting from your server/computer to an external service). That approach would require ongoing server costs, authentication systems, abuse controls, etc (as would any external computing service), so we’re taking a look at how viable that would be for us in this scenario.

Our recommendation at this point is if the plugin is hanging during a scan, that you try the scan in a different environment (e.g. locally, etc.). I like to use https://localbyflywheel.com/ for local environments. For full disclosure Flywheel was purchased by WP Engine last year so of course I would like their local dev product ??

As previously mentioned, it’s always preferential to run the scans on a non-production server anyways (hangs or no hangs).

There are other tools / options for linting for PHP version compatibility that require more technical ability than is required with this plugin, so we’re planning to update documentation on the plugin to reference these alternative methods should users of the plugin experience a hanging scan.

Right now we’re focused on getting support for 7.4 support out the door and we’ll be coming back to documentation updates and looking deeper at the side linting option.

It looks like it will be right after the holidays.

The update for 7.4 is dev complete now and is awaiting code review before release. We’re getting close ??

We are working on an update to support 7.4 now ??

It runs in the background; however, make sure to run the scans in a non production environment in case things get hung up when scanning. I personally recommend https://localbyflywheel.com/ for a quick and easy way to set up a local environment. Good luck!

Hey @bargeboards – Can you log into your WP Engine user portal and open a support chat so we can help? In addition to helping with your issue, those folks can point you in the direction to some of our other PHP versioning tools you may find helpful (e.g. spinning up a test environment in PHP X and so on).

Thanks!
David

@colewebdev / @harlointeractive – I work for WPE. If you all would like us to help troubleshoot this, please feel free to log into your WP Engine portal and open up a support chat.

@gioni – If there appears to be a platform compatibility issue with WP Engine and your plugin, please email wptech -a-t- wpengine -d-o-t- com and we can see what we can do to help ??

Hey @jsa922 – Here is some guidance that should help with approaching your PHP upgrade to help ensure your site won’t break. Apologies if you already know much of this…

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TLDR: Make a copy of your site in a PHP 7.X instance (i.e. “staging”). Ask your host for help. Use something like localbyflywheel.com (free) to run the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin locally to avoid server timeouts. Use the “linting” report the plugin generates as a list of clues for testing your staging copy.
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To get started with a good test plan, you’ll need to clone your site in a PHP 7.X “instance” on your web host (i.e. “staging). You will use this copy of your site to test if everything still works correctly regardless of how you use the PHP Compatibility Plugin (e.g. you’ll still want to test your designs, forms, any ads, and so on).

If everything works as expected, you would then push from that “staging” version to your live site. If you don’t know how to create a copy for testing, contact your web host’s technical support and they can help you. At WP Engine we have a bunch of tools to help customers automatically do this, and there’s a good chance your host does as well.

Once you have a staging copy of your site, you can use this PHP Compatibility plugin to run a report to show what parts of your site might be problematic with the new version of PHP.

The PHP Compatibility plugin is a “linting” plugin which surfaces parts of your code (e.g. plugins, etc) which might not have perfect PHP 7.X code.

While errors might be surfaced for a particular plugin, that might not mean the plugin is not functional.

This is why I like to use the PHP Compatibility plugin reports as a list of clues for what to test on the staging copy of the site I’m working on. e.g. “If a plugin throws up an error, I’ll test what that plugin does.”

Relative to the plugin getting hung while scanning your site, it’s hard to say without knowing more about your hosting environment. There are CLI approaches that can get around the server timeout issues; however, I recommend you run your site in a local version of WordPress (e.g. it will run on your computer vs. your hosting provider’s servers).

There are many tools that can help you run a local instance of your site. I recommend https://localbyflywheel.com/ which is a free tool made by the company I work for.

Once you have your site in the local environment, you can run the PHP Comp plugin and likely avoid the timeouts. The plugin will then provide a report of possible problem areas which you can use as a guide for what to test on your PHP 7.x test copy of your site on your host.

If anything on your site doesn’t work in the test environment on your host, you’ll have to troubleshoot why and maybe update/replace one plugin, theme, or the other.

All that being said, if you have a simple site and everything works just fine on your site in a PHP 7.X test environment, then you could consider that good enough with or without using this plugin ??

In any case, I hope this is helpful!

Hi @marcoszy. I’ve reported this error to the development team working on an update to this plugin.

In the mean time, have you tried running the plugin from a local copy of the site? This would help get around any server-side issues (assuming that’s what this is), and it’s preferred to run the “linting” this plugin does in a non-production environment.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hey @kenburell. Check out the free local WP tool “Local by Flywheel” for running a local version. It’s fairly easy to use.

That being said, if you’re not that technical, I’m not sure if the errors this plugin shows will be all that helpful (e.g. would show plugins that might cause issues, but also may require code changes to “fix” those errors).

My personal suggestion is to get an instance of WordPress on a PHP 7.2/3 (highest they have) server on your host.

Ask your host how to set that up specifically on their servers. At WPE, we have tools that automatically do this. Your host may have something similar.

Once you get a copy of the site in a PHP 7.x instance, test to see if anything breaks. There’s a good chance that everything will work fine. If a particular thing breaks (e.g. a form), chances are the break is due to a PHP version compatibility issue.

I hope this helps. Again, this PHP scanner plugin is good for identifying particular and possible issues, but testing functionality / look-and-feel on an actual 7.x instance is needed no matter what.

Good luck!

Some environments behave differently than others when running the plugin and there is a known issue w/ some plugins causing the scanning to hang. Have either of you tried running the plugin in a local copy of your site / a different server? As a word of advice, we definitely recommend you run the scans locally vs. on a production server.