How to Restart PHP and Change PHP Version on Your WordPress Website

Restarting the PHP on your website if something goes wrong takes but a button click. Switching to a different PHP version is yet another click away. This article is here to walk you through said clicks!

Reasons to restart your site’s PHP

It’s pretty rare that a user has to restart his or her WordPress website’s PHP engine, but sometimes PHP just crashes or you encounter a 502 Bad Gateway error or some site speed or connectivity issue needs a PHP reboot to be fixed. In cases like that it’s reassuring to know how to restart your website’s PHP engine.

How to restart PHP

If you have a 10Web account – which is super easy and quick to get if you don’t – restarting PHP is not a problem.

Just login to your 10Web dashboard, click “Manage website,” then “Tools” and click “Restart PHP.”

Done! You’ll get a message on your screen when the reboot is done. Also keep in mind that you need to clear cache afterwards to see the change.

How to change the PHP version

The older versions of PHP gradually move toward the end of their lives, so our recommendation is using at least PHP 7.2 for your site: not only is it much faster, but also gets up-to-date support and security.

So, if you’re running an older version and want to switch to a newer one, here’s what you need to do.

Login to your 10Web dashboard, click “Manage website” and then “Tools.” Select the version you want to change to from the dropdown menu on the right:

This popup will show up:

Basically, you can just read the message: the switch will take up to 3 minutes, there will be a few seconds of backend downtime, and cache management will be unavailable till the engine is activated.

Click “Switch to PHP 7.2” (or whatever the desirable version is) and wait for the notification that the change has been made.

That’s it. Congrats!

Ran into an issue when restarting PHP or switching to a different version? Let us know in the comments.