Are UTF8MB4 tables required for EE4?
Development and Programming
I see that EE4 creates UTF8MB4 tables but is this required? My staging server with Nexcess is still running PHP 5.6 and they say that only PHP7 supports UFT8MB4.
I could possibly upgrade the server to use PHP7 but I’ve got several old EE2 sites running there. Does EE 2.8.1 run off PHP7 without issues?
v2.8.1 was released well before PHP 7, so no, it won’t work, but you should be able to easily update to the latest v2. PHP 7 compatibility was added in 2.11.0. You’ll have improved performance and it would be a shame to hobble v4 just because it shares a server with four-year-old software. So that’s my recommendation. But no, v4 doesn’t require utf8mb4 but you will not have any emoji support and will have to do a massive conversion of your database at a later date when you inevitably upgrade your environment.