A couple of months ago I was trying out the PicLens WordPress Plugin. After installing it and trying to activate it I received a message that said, “This plugin requires PHP 5.1 and you have 4.x. So what to do?
After investigating a bit using Google and instant messaging my host provider, the solution was to add this line:
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
to the .htaccess file. I know this gets rather techy for some folks but I use cpanel and cpanel has a File Manager that will allow you to click on the .htaccess file in your public_html folder under your WordPress instal. After clicking once on .htaccess a there are file actions you can take to change it, view it, delete it, etc.
I edited the file, added the line above and saved the file. That magic line tells the server to use PHP 5. Pretty cool. All was well after that.
So, if you run into an error like that where you want to be upgrading to a different version of PHP you can do it by editing your .htaccess file or by getting a hold of tech support at your hosting provider. Again, which can be rather scary for some.
