[php] how to change php version in htaccess in server

I'm using php 5.3 on my local machine. On our webserver we have php 4.8. Our server is a shared server. So I want to change the php version on our server via .htaccess file. Is it possible to do it? If yes how to do it?

Note that all above answers are correct for Apache+mod-php setups. They're less likely to work with more current PHP-FPM setups. Those can typically only be defined in VirtualHost section, not .htaccess.

Again, this highly depends on how your hoster has configured PHP. Each domain/user will typically have it's own running PHP FPM instance. And subsequently a generic …/x-httpd-php52 type will not be recognized.

See ServerFault: Alias a FastCGI proxy protocol handler via Action/ScriptAlias/etc for some overview.

For Apache 2.4.10+/mod-proxy-fcgi configs you might be able to use something like:

 AddHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php-fpm-usr123.sock|fcgi://localhost" .php

Or SetHandler with name mapping from your .htaccess. But again, consulting your hoster on the concrete FPM socket is unavoidable. There's no generic answer to this on modern PHP-FPM setups.

You can't change PHP version by .htaccess.

you need to get your server updated, for PHP 5.3 or you can find another host, which serves PHP 5.3 on shared hosting.

This worked for me

PHP 7.2

AddHandler application/x-httpd-ea-php72 .php .php7 .phtml

PHP 7.3

AddHandler application/x-httpd-ea-php73 .php

Try this to switch to php4:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php

Upd. Looks like I didn't understand your question correctly. This will not help if you have only php 4 on your server.

An addition to the current marked answer:

Place the addhandler inside the following scope, like so:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

   AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
   RewriteEngine On

   ....

</IfModule>

Go to File Manager on your CPanel >>> Public html >>> find the .htaccess file >>> right click on the on it >>>> click edit.see picture

Type the number of the version you want to change to. i.e - 73, 70 or 71.

Hope this helps. After that, save changes.

just FYI in GoDaddy it's this:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5-3 .php

To switch to PHP 4.4:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.0:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.1:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php51 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.2:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php52 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.3:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php53 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.4:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php54 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to PHP 5.5:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php55 .php .php5 .php4 .php3

To switch to the secure PHP 5.2 with Suhosin patch:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php52s .php .php5 .php4 .php3