Before you spend time upgrading to a new lightsail instance in the hope of your PHP version meeting WordPress minimum requirements, it’s useful to know if the version available is high enough.

You can check which PHP version you’re going to end up with using the following steps:

• Open your lightsail home page
• Click the Create Instance button
• Check the ‘Linux/Unix’ option is selected
• Look for the ‘WordPress’ option and make a note of the number displayed underneath (Something like a.b.c-d)

Ok, next we’ll check the Bitnami WordPress changelog

• Open the changelog file
• Search for a matching number from your note above
• Check for a bullet which begins Updated php to
• If no match, keep reading down the file until you find the first match for Updated php to
• That’s the current PHP version you’ll get if you spin up a new lightsail wordpress install

If it’s the same or higher than the message being shown inside WordPress you can go ahead. If it’s not then you need to set a reminder to check back regularly on the lightsail creation page to see when the version updates.

AWS don’t use the very latest version available from Bitnami.

The final thing to consider… strangely is if WordPress supports the PHP version you’ll be upgrading to. WordPress maintain a list of which versions of PHP they support (properly and in beta).

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