We have company websites running on php 5.5, that we have been advised is now no longer receiving security updates, and that php 7 is not as backward compatible as we might hope should we upgrade.
We have to opt out of upgrade, and pay fee to stay on 5.5, from webhosts.
Web chap suggests that it may be an ongoing or increasing issue over time (I think I agree) for security, and risks our website.

Am I being ‘had’ in anyway, or will we be fine running old tech for a little longer before we change our (huge number of pages) websites?
Would it make sense to try and test our site on php7 somehow (carbon copy on separate area of server?)?

Whats the system you’re running? are you using anything heavily customised or any of the big cms type apps?

I’ve switched the majority of our clients over to php7 and had very little issues but then again we do have good coding practises.

Email me if you want

I think customised – I use backend to do any work that is PHP, and Adobe Contribute (urgh) or just code on wordpad for the static pages.

http://www.ltl.org.uk/

Looks a few years old and it was a fairly dated way of doing things then. In short though you’ll want to setup a staging area so you can test it on a php7 environment for all the major functionality (membership areas and signups).

It’s really quick to setup a staging site if you have ssh access to the server and mysql or some kind of database access.. it’d be hard to say without trying it as you don’t know what Christmas tree lights will turn on!

I’ve done some pretty horrific migrations before on sites much larger so I wouldn’t be put off – you’ll probably get an idea if it’s plain sailing or a nightmare in a couple of hours.

Does look like your site is overdue an upgrade to a responsive site with some more modern practises. I’d probably take that opportunity to move over to a CMS like wordpress so you can get away from Contribute 😉

Does look like your site is overdue an upgrade to a responsive site with some more modern practises. I’d probably take that opportunity to move over to a CMS like wordpress so you can get away from Contribute

You and me both….