WP Minder

Blog

Why Do I Need to Upgrade to PHP 7.1+?

by Leave a Comment

Depending on your host, you may have gotten a rude surprise recently when you tried to update WordPress and got this message:

You cannot update because WordPress 5.2 requires PHP version 5.6.20 or higher. You are running version 5.6.3.

That’s right. Unless you’re running the (extremely old and unsupported) PHP 5.6.20 or greater, you won’t be able to update WordPress again. Ever.

Ideally, your host should be using PHP 7.1+ which is much, much faster than the old 5.x versions, as well as being actively maintained (7.1 and higher get security and other updates regularly).

WordPress is trying to nudge users to move to new versions of PHP for these two main reasons. In addition to not being able to update WordPress, if you’re on old PHP you will also not be able to install themes and plugins that don’t support your version of PHP. Plugins or themes may simple stop working correctly on the older, unsupported PHP versions.

So what can you do?

If you’re on a good host, you won’t have this problem as they will be keeping up with PHP updates or, like SiteGround, will offer you options on which version of PHP to use for your site.

If you’re on a bad host, you’ll find out quickly enough if you ask them to update PHP and they won’t. That means it’s time to move to a good WordPress host. There really is no other option – ask us if you need help choosing a good, high-quality WordPress host.

If you have the option to switch yourself, not so fast… there is a considerable amount of prep you need to do on your site before flipping the switch. Read this guide on how to upgrade WordPress to PHP 7 to understand what’s involved in doing this without breaking your site.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

How our WordPress Care Plans Save You Time

by Leave a Comment

In my experience, I haven’t ever come across a client whose goal is to become a master of WordPress.

I don’t mean a power user who blogs brilliantly and can do just about anything you can think of with WordPress. I mean a tech star who knows exactly what to do when they see that dreaded ‘White Screen of Death.’ The one who doesn’t panic when they see a defaced home page, but gets to work on a fix.

This is where WP Minder comes in.

I’d been helping clients with WordPress minor problems and major emergencies for years when I decided to make WP Minder my second business in 2014. Clients were on board from the very start – and one reason is because of all the time our WordPress Care Plans save them.

Here are some examples…

  • WP Minder clients don’t have to spend time hunting in Google for error info when they see a big PHP warning in their WordPress dashboard. And for crashes and blank screens, again, it’s not their problem and they don’t need to deal with it.
  • Setting up offsite backups can be a pain. Making sure they’re really running even if they’re set on automatic is another thing our clients don’t have to do. And occasional testing to make sure the backups really work? They don’t do that, either.
  • SSL certificates expire. Our clients don’t have to worry about that, as our SSL certificates are free and they renew automatically.
  • Is your site too slow? If you’re on shared hosting, the answer is yes. Our clients’ sites are on super-fast Nginx servers with PHP 7+.
  • Our clients typically don’t wait long for support. Once they get in touch with us, it’s generally a quick fix for them.
  • Our annual security audits usually identify site problems early, enabling us to be proactive in getting them fixed.
  • Well-maintained websites rarely get hacked, but if they do, we get our clients back up and running fast. They don’t need to spend time worrying about lost sales or lost opportunities.

Learn more about the benefits of working with WP Minder. Maybe we can save you some time too?

New WordPress Training Videos!

by 2 Comments

WordPress Training Manual cover

WP Minder is happy to announce our brand new WordPress training videos for all Maintenance Plan levels.

Our new training resources include video tutorials for:

  • general WordPress usage
  • WooCommerce
  • Yoast SEO
  • Gravity Forms
  • Google Analytics (official Analytics Academy videos from Google)

In addition, there’s a new WordPress User Manual you can view online or download as a PDF.

If you’re a WP Minder client you’ll find the new Training Videos right under the Dashboard in the WordPress admin menu.

Weekly Links Roundup – Hacked Sites, Easy WP Guide, Event Calender Plugins, PHP Versions

by Leave a Comment

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

If your WordPress site had been hacked, how would you know? Check out this infographic from iThemes showing 7 key signs that your site has been the target of a hack. Prevention is much easier than recovery – if you need help keeping your site secure, check out our WordPress maintenance plans. We include an upfront (and then annual) security audit of your site in all our plans.

Easy WP Guide has just released their new guide for WordPress 5.1 – get a PDF here. But don’t bother to print it, it gets updated frequently and is quite large!

Looking for an event calendar for your site? Here’s a roundup of 5 event calendar plugins for WordPress. This list is unusual in that it doesn’t include some of the big players in the category – these are all commercial plugins available at Code Canyon. Check out this post for some top free event calendar plugins – lots of high-quality choices listed here.

A common problem I see with new WP Minder clients is old PHP versions. Why is this so important? WordPress now recommends a minimum of PHP 7.3. But over 77% of WordPress users are on unsupported (read: no security updates ever) versions of PHP – that’s PHP 7.0 and older! Most users don’t know or care about this, but here’s why you should.

You can check the PHP version with this plugin.

WP Minder’s maintenance plans include fast Managed WordPress Hosting on modern, up-to-date servers. Besides the security benefits our clients also get the performance boost that PHP 7.1+ provides.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Copyrighted Images, Gutenberg, Mega Menus, Gallery Plugins

by Leave a Comment

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

“Ooh, that photo would be perfect for this post I’m writing. Can I use that picture?” Good question! And the answer may surprise you. Learn about the ethics and laws surrounding copyrighted images in this infographic.

So… have you tried Gutenberg yet? I broke down in January and gave it a try myself, and honestly it was not as disturbing as I’d read it was (of course by then a number of bugs had been ironed out). I’m not using it all the time, but I am using it now for some layout tasks that I would previously have added a plugin for like accordions. (Hint: if you use the Classic Editor plugin I’ve mentioned here before, you can switch back and forth between the old and new editors with one click).

If you need a guide to learn Gutenberg (I’d recommend it, it saves time over just diving in and trying to figure it out) and a resource for understanding all that it does, try Go Gutenberg. And if you start using it you’ll likely find it doesn’t have a block you need. There are a number of free plugins now with more blocks; I like CoBlocks because it was the first one I tried with a nice clean accordion block.

Shifting gears… if you’re planning a new site with a lot of pages, you may have considered using a mega menu (you know – one of those huge dropdown menus like this one on the Moleskine site). But do you really need a mega menu? Maybe not. Learn more about when to use mega menus and when it’s not really necessary.

And finally… a winter 2019 roundup of the best WordPress gallery plugins. FooGallery is still at the top of my list.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

This site uses cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies. View privacy information.