How To Install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a popular server scripting language known for creating dynamic and interactive Web pages. PHP is a widely-used programming language on the Web.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of PHP 7.4 on a Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04.

Ubuntu 20.04 ships with PHP 7.4 in its upstream repositories. Just install it and the extensions with the apt package manager:

sudo apt install php php-cli php-fpm php-json php-pdo php-mysql php-zip php-gd php-mbstring php-curl php-xml php-pear php-bcmath

Once the package has finished installing, we can test PHP in the command line:

$ php -version

PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: May 05 2020 12:24:11) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Step 3. Test PHP.

To test PHP, create a test file named info.php with the content below. Save the file, then browse to it to see if PHP is working:

nano /var/www/html/info.php

In this file, paste the following code:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Try to access it at http://your_server_ip/info.php. If the PHP info page is rendered in your browser then everything looks good and you are ready to proceed further.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PHP website.