How To Install PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open-source, popular general-purpose scripting language that is widely used and best suited for developing websites and web-based applications. It is a server-side scripting language that can be embedded in HTML. By default, Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) now comes with PHP 7.0. You can install PHP 5.6 in parallel and switch between them using the following instructions.

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 5.6 on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
• 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 5.6 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

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

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 16.04.

Use the following set of commands to enable PPA for PHP 5.6 in your Ubuntu system and install PHP 5.6:

sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Now, install PHP 5.6using the apt command:

apt-get install -y php5.6

Verify the PHP version using the following command:

php -V

Result:

PHP 5.6.32-1+ubuntu16.04.1+deb.sury.org+1 (cli)
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
 with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest stable version of PHP 5.6 on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS  (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official PHP website.