I have always tried my best to create a development friendly environment with the Rapid Purple Hosting services – and this means keeping up to date with the latest stable platforms.
With that said I have added the latest stable PHP releases to your control panel. You can now use the current stable version – PHP 5.5.5, as well as two legacy versions – PHP 5.4.21 and PHP 5.3.27.
These new PHP updates do not add any new functionality really and are primarily focused on polishing what is already available and on fixing reported bugs. The PHP 5.5.5 release, for example, addresses more than 20 reported bugs (full changelog), whereas PHP 5.4.21 contains 10 bug fixes (full changelog).
As for PHP 5.3.27, this will be the last official legacy update – no new bugs will be fixed in the future, save for security fixes. The latest regular release of the PHP 5.3.X branch brings 10 bug fixes, including a security fix for the XML parser (full changelog). Again to maintain a good development platform with support for legacy scripts as well as newer ones, Rapid Purple Hosting will continue to offer PHP 5.3.27, but keep in mind that the PHP team does advise users to migrate to the newer PHP 5.5.X and PHP 5.4.X branches.