On the PHP.net site they've made an announcement about releases of all currently supported major PHP versions with bugfix/security releases.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP [7.0.33, 7.1.25, and 7.2.13]. Five security-related issues were fixed in this release. All PHP 7.0 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.

You can download these latest releases from either the main downloads page or windows.php.net for the Windows executables.

There's also a note for the PHP 7.0.33 release based on the release and support timelines: this will be the final release, of any kind, for the PHP 7.0.x branch including security support. If you haven't already upgraded past version 7.0.x, there's never been a better time!

On the main PHP.net site they've announced the first stable release in the PHP 7.3.x series: PHP 7.3.0!

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.3.0. This release marks the third feature update to the PHP 7 series.

PHP 7.3.0 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as:

• Flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc Syntax
• PCRE2 Migration
• Multiple MBString Improvements
• LDAP Controls Support
• Improved FPM Logging
• Windows File Deletion Improvements
• Several Deprecations

You can find out more information about these features and view the Changelog for this release from the announcement. As always, you can download this latest release from either the main downloads page or windows.php.net for the Windows binaries. If you need more information on moving to this new release, check out the migration guide.

Phoronix has a new post to their blog sharing some benchmark results for PHP 7.3, the next major language release, and things are looking positive!

Released on Thursday was PHP 7.3 RC6 as the last planned pre-release for the upcoming PHP 7.3. Here are some benchmarks looking at the PHP 7.3 performance compared to PHP releases going back to the v5.5 series on a Linux server.

[...] I ran some fresh benchmarks over the past day on PHP 5.5.38, PHP 5.6.38, PHP 7.0.32, PHP 7.1.24, PHP 7.2.12, and the PHP 7.3.0-RC6 test release. [...] PHP 7.3 is just shy of 10% faster than PHP 7.2 in the popular PHPBench. PHP 7.3 is 31% faster than PHP 7.0 or nearly 3x the speed of PHP5.

The post includes more benchmarks that reinforce this same trend with both the Zend performance testing and their own testing framework.

Overall, PHP 7.3 is shaping up to be another notable upgrade to the PHP7 series for its continued performance improvements, the new PHP FFI interface, and other new additions for this PHP release due out in early December.

The PHP project has released the latest Release Candidate for the upcoming PHP 7.3.0 release: PHP 7.3.0RC6.

The PHP team is glad to announce the presumably last PHP 7.3.0 pre-release, PHP 7.3.0RC6. The rough outline of the PHP 7.3 release cycle is specified in the PHP Wiki.

For source downloads of PHP 7.3.0RC6 please visit the download page. Windows sources and binaries can be found on windows.php.net/qa/.

Based on the release schedule from the PHP wiki, this is the last Release Candidate for PHP 7.3.0. The GA version (not the final release, still testing) will be available on December 6th.

In a recent post to the Hackernoon site, Sergii Shanin shares his take on the "PHP is dead" conversations and posts out there with the expected "Viva le PHP!" (long live PHP!) following it.

The fracas over Gutenberg and WordPress is the latest installment in the death of PHP. Take a deep breath everybody. Let’s ignore the trolls and take a look at what Mark Twain, Fidel Castro and PHP have in common?—?and more to the point, why PHP is still a reasonable choice for startups and small businesses.

t looks like ‘PHP is dead’ blog posts started cropping up in 2011 (let me know if you find older ones). If you search around Medium and the coding bootcamps that are popping up like mushrooms, the only common denominator is that everyone hates on PHP or simply ignores it. Apparently, it’s impossible to code in PHP with an oiled beard and ironic t-shirt while drinking overpriced coffee.

He shares two of the most wide-spread myths about PHP - that it's slow and that it can't scale - and dispels them. He then goes through some types projects where PHP "shines" including content driven websites and e-commerce sites. He shares some the "business sense" around choosing PHP, the perspective senior PHP developers bring to teams and projects, and the seeming "nine lives" of PHP.

As announced on the main PHP.net site, several new versions of the language have been released including one for the upcoming PHP 7.3.x series:

• PHP 7.1.24
• PHP 7.2.12
• PHP 7.3.0RC5

The v7.1 and v7.2 releases are bugfix releases and include changes in core functionality, date handling, FTP, Tidy and XML.

The PHP 7.3.0RC5 release is the latest Release Candidate for the PHP 7.3.x series. If all goes well and no major issues come up, the next step in the release process is to officially branch the 7.3.0 release and have one more Release Candidate (6) before a GA release.

As always you can download the bugfix releases from the downloads section (or windows.php.net) and the Release Candidate from the QA site (or windows.php.net/qa). Bugs found should be reported via the PHP bug tracking system.

On the PHP.net site they've posted the announcement about the release of the latest Release Candidate for the upcoming PHP 7.3.x series: PHP 7.3.0RC4

The PHP team is glad to announce the next PHP 7.3.0 pre-release, PHP 7.3.0RC4. The rough outline of the PHP 7.3 release cycle is specified in the PHP Wiki.

[...] For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. Internal changes are listed in the UPGRADING.INTERNALS file. These files can also be found in the release archive.

As always, testing of this preview release (not intended for use in production) is appreciated and any bugs found should be reported. The source download can be grabbed from this download page and the Windows binaries are over on the Windows QA site.

Terry Chay has posted the answer to an interesting question about the PHP language that asks what is something very few know about PHP. The original answer was shared on Quora but he's copied it here for more visibility.

Question: What’s something very few people know about PHP? Answer: It is mind-bogglingly popular for web development. That popularity hasn’t diminished even though conventional wisdom says otherwise…

Over a decade ago, I said about 40% of the top 100 websites use PHP. [...] Overall, almost 80% of the internet is powered by PHP, and that has held steady for years! Newer web languages such as Ruby or NodeJS have only grown at the expense of other languages such as ASP, Java, or Perl.

He also shares some about the role of WordPress in these numbers (a big chunk at 30%) and a guess at how many PHP developers there are in the world right now.

The main PHP.net site has announced the release of two new versions of PHP in the 7.1 and 7.2 series: PHP 7.1.23 and PHP 7.2.11.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.1.23 [and 7.2.11. This is a bugfix release.

All PHP 7.1 [and 7.2] users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.

Bugs fixed in theses releases include updates to the core language, the curl extension, opcaching, reflection functionality and the XMLRPC handling. If you're interested in all of the changes and want more detail, check out their respective Changelogs. As always, you can download these latest releases from the main downloads page or from the windows.php.net site.