PHP & MySQL Upgrades

PHP 7.4 and every version before it are out of security support. MySQL 5.7 reached end of life in 2023. Systems on either keep working — until an unpatched vulnerability, a hosting requirement, or an incompatible dependency forces the issue on someone else's schedule. We do these upgrades on yours.

PHP 5.x / 7.x to 8.x

• Compatibility inventory first: automated scanning (PHPCompatibility, Rector) plus a human read of the code the scanners cannot judge — loose comparisons, error-suppression patterns, extension use.
• Remediation: mechanical fixes applied mechanically, semantic fixes by hand, with each change reviewable.
• Test scaffolding: most codebases this age have no test suite; we build a smoke harness over the routes that matter so the migration is verified by diffing behavior, not by hoping.
• Staged rollout: old and new runtimes side by side, traffic moved incrementally, a warm rollback path until the numbers hold.

MySQL 5.7 to 8.0

The 8.0 upgrade is one-way, so we rehearse it before we run it: the upgrade checker, charset and collation strategy, auth-plugin compatibility with your PHP version, then a full rehearsal on a restored production backup — which doubles as a live test of your backup path. Production cutover is replica-based where the estate allows it, so rollback stays a connection-string change.

Sequencing both

When both are due, order matters — old PHP drivers cannot speak to MySQL 8's default authentication, so we plan the pair as one project with the PHP side usually leading.

Engagements are hourly time and materials, scoped in an initial conversation. Tell us your versions — the compatibility picture usually takes one call to sketch.