As WordPress continues to evolve it is imperative that you, as a site owner keep pace. The technical requirements are evolving too. PHP has advanced to version 8.2 and many of its predecessor versions are only minimally supported. By that I mean that they are no longer enhanced and only security patches are applied. The minimum recommended requirements can be found here on the WordPress.org website.
WordPess 6.3 is scheduled for release on August 8, 2023 and along with it is the dropping of support for PHP 5. That means those sites running PHP 5.6 will have problems.
Not only is keeping up with the technical changes a good idea but you should also be monitoring your themes and plugins for on-going support. This is especially true for older websites. It is possible that some of your plugins no longer have updates available. This can be problematic when wanting to update the core WordPress software. You also need to be aware of changes to your hosting environment. You don’t want to be caught off-guard to upgrades that may adversely affect your site.
Please, if you have any questions or concerns about your website and the potential impact of these type of changes, get in touch with us.