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OpenCart and PHP version incompatibilities
One important thing to keep in mind with your OpenCart site is to make sure that the PHP version being used in the site and your OpenCart version are fully compatible. Incompatibilities can cause various issues in your site, preventing it from working as intended.
The following is a short list of the required version of PHP based on OpenCart version:
| OpenCart Version | First PHP Version | Last PHP Version |
|---|---|---|
| 2.2.0.0 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 2.3.0.0 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 2.3.0.1 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 2.3.0.2 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.0.0 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.0.2 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.1.1 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.1.2 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.2.0 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.0 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.1 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.2 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.3 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.4 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.5 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.6 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.7 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.8 | 5.4.0 | Unknown |
| 3.0.3.9 | 7.3.0 | 8.4.0 |
| 3.0.4.0 | 7.3.0 | 8.4.0 |
| 3.0.4.1 | 7.3.0 | 8.4.0 |
| 3.0.5.0 | 8.1 | 8.4.0 |
| 4.1.0.0 | 8.0.2 | Unknown |
| 4.1.0.1 | 8.0.2 | Unknown |
| 4.1.0.2 | 8.0.2 | Unknown |
| 4.1.0.3 | 8.0.2 | Unknown |
PHP deprecations
But just the above list does not tell the whole story. PHP can make quite a lot of changes over it's updates, including "deprecating" various features, warning against using them due to the possibility of future removal. It is generally a good idea to check for deprecation warnings as this means that the OpenCart version in use was not built with the PHP version being used and this may cause issues other than just warnings. For example, OpenCart 3.0.5.0 is known to not be compatible with PHP 8.5
Deprecation warnings can be found as part of the error log, as described in this blog article.
Extensions
An additional cause of possible PHP version issues are installed extensions and modifications. Just as the base OpenCart code is built expecting a particular PHP version, so are your installed extensions and modifications, so even if unmodified OpenCart may be able to run with no issues in a particular PHP version, this isn't a guarantee that any extensions you might then install would. If you are having issues related to an extension you should contact the extension developer, or if the extension is no longer supported I would recommend contacting Antropy so that we could fix the issue.
Recommendations
Generally, your site should be loaded with the latest PHP version that causes no compatibility issues with it. If you have noticed the signs of version compatibility issues, such as deprecation warnings, you may need to contact your web host with a request to downgrade the PHP version for a more compatible one.
While some web hosts may require newer PHP versions, we at Antropy can provide hosting compatible with older OpenCart version using hardened versions of unsupported PHP versions. Please take a look at our hosting packages here.