Ubuntu 16.04: Changing PHP Versions

I was making some changes to a web server recently that I figured I would make a super short blog tutorial about!

Changing From PHP 5.6-7.0

The same instructions will work for pretty much any version of PHP you would like to install or change from. Just change the version of PHP in the commands and you’re good to go.

Firstly, you’ll need to add the public PHP repository. Then you’ll need to update your packages. Then you need to install PHP. I’ve included both versions in case you’re switching one way or the other. It won’t matter if you have both installed, we’ll only be referencing one by the end.

sudo apt-get-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php7.0 php5.6 php5.6-mysql php7.0-mysql php-gettext php5.6-mbstring php-mbstring php7.0-mbstring php-xdebug libapache2-mod-php5.6 libapache2-mod-php7.0

Once everything has run its course, you can start disabling and enabling which module is being used in Apache2.

sudo a2dismod php5.6; sudo a2enmod php7.0; sudo service apache2 restart

As we all know, there are two versions of PHP that run: Apache2 and CLI. To change the CLI version fo PHP, you’ll have to run the following command.

sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.0

This means when you run php -v you’ll see PHP 7.0 as your PHP CLI version.

That’s it! Super simple stuff!

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