PHP comes pre-installed along with Plesk on a windows server, and by default, PHP only gets upgraded as new versions of Plesk are released. Unfortunately the release cycle of the Plesk Control Panel does not keep pace with that of PHP, so the result is that VPS / VDS Containers are often running versions of PHP that are several versions older than the current release. This can be an issue when you are trying to get PCI compliant

Follow the sets below to upgrade PHP

In order to upgrade PHP 5.x to the needed version (beyond that which is current bundled with the Plesk Control Panel), please perform the following steps…

  1. if you want you can login to plesk, and go to Server Components you can check the version of php you are currently running
  2. Stop plesk services Control Panel and all that are included in the Plesk Run-Time section. As sown in the image below.





  3. Rename the folder %plesk_dir%\Additional\PleskPHP5 to something like the PleskPHP5_OLD

    (%plesk_dir% is a reference to the default path to the Plesk install, which is normally C:\Parallels\Plesk\ or C:\SWSoft\Plesk\).

  4. Create a new folder within %plesk_dir%\Additional\ and call it PleskPHP5.
  5. Download the version of PHP you need, extract its content to a temp directory, and then copy it’s content to the newly created folder PleskPHP5.
  6. Copy the php.ini file from old folder PleskPHP5_OLD to the newly created folder. In the case of any required changes to the php.ini file format or options that may occur from one version of PHP to the next, you may want to use an application like “Compare-It” to see if any changes need to be merged.
  7. Make sure the permissions are inherited. If not, force the folder permissions to propagate.
  8. Re-start the previously stopped Plesk services.
  9. Go back into the Components Management section in plesk and click the Refresh button and check if you can see the new PHP version indicated therein.
Note

You need to be aware that PHP versions other than shipped with Parallels Plesk Panel have not been tested by Parallels for compatibility, security, stability, etc.; and that you should take a FULL server backup before undertaking these actions. Also, the process described here does not affect PHP version that Plesk uses for itself or the bundled version of PHP 4.x.

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