Disclosure: This post contains an endorsement for products and/or services, which means when you click on a link, I may receive a commission or some other bonus. However, all the products and services I recommend are personally handpicked by me and I use them daily and/or recommend them to my clients regularly.
You may or may not have noticed that since WordPress 5.2 – released in 2019 – Site Health has been an included feature of WordPress by default. The tool monitors a site’s health and alerts users to potential issues and suggests improvements. One of the alerts I seem to be seeing quite a bit lately is ‘Outdated SQL Server’. Site Health goes on to explain, “The SQL server is a required piece of software for the database WordPress uses to store all your site’s content and settings. For optimal performance and security reasons, you should consider running MySQL version 8.0 or higher. Contact your web hosting company to correct this.”
I conducted a Google search for ‘what to do about outdated sql server message from site health’. Google returned the following: “In most cases, your hosting company will be able to upgrade the SQL server version for you. This might involve switching to a supported version like MariaDB 10.0 or higher. They will likely handle the entire process, ensuring a smooth upgrade to optimize your site’s performance and security.” My experience thus far – having reached out to 3 different hosting providers – is that your web hosting company is unlikely to do anything about it. Unfortunately, what’s installed on your server is probably what you’re stuck with. Across that, admittedly limited board of just 3, I was told that’s what’s on the server, and that’s what the site is therefore running.
In general, I don’t monitor my clients’ server info unless something like this surfaces. I was curious to see what my GreenGeeks’ clients MySQL version was. Imagine my surprise when I discovered their servers are not running MySQL at all, but MariaDB! MariaDB is generally considered to be faster and more scalable than MySQL. This is just further evidence that GreenGeeks offers a superior product compared to many other shared hosting providers. And one more reason I love them. The fact that they are the world’s leading eco-friendly web hosting provider doesn’t hurt, either.
