Step 1 — Installing PHP Versions 7.0 and 7.2 with PHP-FPM

Begin by installing the SCL repository to your system:

sudo yum install centos-release-scl -y

First let’s discover what versions of PHP 7 are available on SCL:

sudo yum list rh-php7[0-9].x86_64

You’ll see an output like this:

We will install versions 7.2 and 7.3. Lets begin with the older version. Install rh-php72 and rh-php72-php-fpm

sudo yum install rh-php72 rh-php7-php-fpm -y

• rh-php72 is a metapackage that runs PHP applications.
• rh-php72-php-fpm provides the Fast Process Manager interpreter that runs as a daemon and receives Fast/CGI requests.

You also can install extensions by using command:

sudo yum install rh-php72 rh-php72-php-fpm rh-php72-php-cli rh-php72-php-common rh-php72-php-gd rh-php72-php-intl rh-php72-php-mbstring rh-php72-php-mcrypt rh-php72-php-mysqlnd rh-php72-php-pdo rh-php72-php-process rh-php72-php-xml -y

Now repeat the process for PHP version 7.3. Install rh-php73 and rh-php73-php-fpm. Or:

sudo yum install rh-php73 rh-php73-php-fpm rh-php73-php-cli rh-php73-php-common rh-php73-php-gd rh-php73-php-intl rh-php73-php-mbstring rh-php73-php-mcrypt rh-php73-php-mysqlnd rh-php73-php-pdo rh-php73-php-process rh-php73-php-xml -y

Next, run the following commands to start using both software collections:

sudo scl enable rh-php72 bash
sudo scl enable rh-php73 bash

By default, both PHP versions are listening on port 9000. But in this tutorial, we want to run two versions simultaneously. Therefore, let’s designate two new ports:

To accomplish this, you can open /etc/opt/rh/rh-php72/php-fpm.d/www.conf in your favorite text editor and change every appearance of 9000 to 9002. Then save and close the file and repeat the process for /etc/opt/rh/rh-php73/php-fpm.d/www.conf, only now substitute 9000 with 9003.

Now you are ready to start and enable your PHP services. Begin with your rh-php72-php-fpm service and enable it to start at boot:

sudo systemctl start rh-php72-php-fpm
sudo systemctl enable rh-php72-php-fpm

Next, verify the status of your rh-php72-php-fpm service:

sudo systemctl status rh-php72-php-fpm

You’ll see an output like this:

Repeating this process, start the rh-php73-php-fpm service and enable it to start at boot:

sudo systemctl start rh-php73-php-fpm
sudo systemctl enable rh-php73-php-fpm

At this point you have installed two PHP versions on your server.

Step 2 — Configuring Nginx for Your Websites

In this section, you will update your website config to make sure that it’ll use right version of php.

nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/your_site.conf

Change your fastcgi_pass point to: 127.0.0.1:9002 -> php72 (or 127.0.0.1:9003 -> php7.3)

Finally, restart the Nginx service to implement your changes:

sudo service nginx restart

ENJOY!!!