Feature Description

As discovered in a support topic, when Composer runs now on PHP 8 it will generate an autoload_real.php that causes syntax errors for PHP 5.6. According to the latest WordPress Statistics, PHP 5.6 only accounts for 6.6% of all installs, and any site running that version of WordPress gets a big upgrade warning shown on the Dashboard. PHP 5 versions older than 5.6 (which WordPress doesn't support now either) take up 2.9%. Given that PHP 5.6 is significantly slower than PHP 7 and PHP 8, it is not in the best interest of users to allow them to stay on this old version either in terms of PX.

• Bump the minimum PHP version in README.md.
• Bump PHP version in amp.php, in both the metadata header and the if version check statement.
• Remove PHP 5.6 from the build-test-measure.yml testing matrix.
  • Eliminate the install-pwa-plugin matrix property (since always true).
  • Move the external-http from 5.6 to new lowest PHP version 7.0.
• Bump the PHP version used in the build-zip GHA step (see Downgrade PHP version from 8.0 to 5.6 for development builds #7030).
• Remove any tests that targeted PHP<7.
• Add step to deploy command that lints the files in vendor for PHP 7.0 compatibility (e.g. via phpcs).

Acceptance Criteria

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Implementation Brief

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QA Testing Instructions

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Demo

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Changelog Entry

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