I had two clients alert me that contact forms on their BlueHost hosted websites were generating errors. One was using WordPress and Contact Form 7. The other was using a regular mail form script using the PHP Mail function, using secure auth, with PEAR and AUTH enabled. The contact forms used to function, so I checked the version of PHP.  Both broken contact forms were running PHP 5.6 – yet other clients who were running 5.4 were having no issues.

I contacted BlueHost tech support and reported this, and they said it was my script. I told them no, it wasn’t, it used to work and now it’s broken, and 5.4 works and 5.6 doesn’t. They said I could revert back to 5.4, and I said why don’t they fix what’s wrong with 5.6. They told me to submit a ticket, that was a week ago no reply.

Today I logged in and to my surprise, this is what I saw:

So BlueHost is moving folks to 5.6, which is in BETA, breaking scripts, and when you call in for help, they tell you it’s the script, not the version of PHP.

Maybe if more folks complain, they’ll actually fix 5.6 and not migrate anyone without telling them.

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill