Since the article is from 2017 php 7 was kind of newish then. I think its seen pretty rapid adoption (mainly because additional speed means fewer servers.).

Since the article is from 2017 php 7 was kind of newish then. I think its seen pretty rapid adoption (mainly because additional speed means fewer servers.). PHP has adopted a strategy of rolling version upgrades with defined end points. They probably should have some "LTS (Long Term Support) type releases. http://php.net/supported-versions.php http://php.net/supported-versions.php 5.6 just reached eol. I think they've put out a securtiy patch since then so its (not quite) completely abandoned. If people aren't forced to upgrade their sites, they won't. So there is huge incentive to just keep running the older versions.