I enabled php8 in configuration and added it to my domain, but I’m getting white screen of death, switching back to 7.4 works just fine. I then followed these instructions to install it manually that someone posted on this forum : Install php 8 as multi php Install instructions
but it said :ERROR: Specified PHP version is already installed."
So it seems php8 is installed, but it is not working with my Wordpress.
Any ideas, what’s going?
Php8 is not compatible with many themes and plugins yet. Wordpress relased the support for php 8 recently from version 5.6 but still they are testing it.
Don’t use php 8 without confirmation that your site is fully compatible with it.
It will take a while before Wordpress will run on PHP 8. There have been some major changes between 8 and 7, and developers have to figure out how to make the code run on both versions.
Even when the core is running on PHP8, all the plugin and theme developers will need to update their code to be compatible. Its going to be a long wait, and I suspect you might have to find alternative plugins for some things.
If you have wp-cli installed, its pretty easy to disable all plugins and see if the site loads. Then re-enable plugins one by one until it breaks to see which one is causing problems. But anyway, the issue is not really anything to do with Hestia. Hestia provides the capability, but its up to WP to make it work.
The interesting thing is, I made a new Wordpress installation with php8, with the same scripts and plugins, and it is running fine, but when I switch the existing site from php7.4 to php8, I get the white screen of death.