A Glasgow IT support company has extended its scan of dental practice websites to Northern England and Northern Ireland, finding that of the sites disclosing their PHP version, one in four in the north run versions that no longer receive security fixes.
Riverbank IT Systems checked 2,387 dental practice websites compiled from a public directory; 2,285 were reachable. Across Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland combined: 1,171 sites (51%) run WordPress; 505 (22%) disclose their PHP version; of those, 147 (29%) run end-of-life PHP. Thirty-two run PHP 7.3 or older (no security fixes since December 2021 or earlier); 11 run PHP 5.6, unsupported since December 2018. Thirty-nine sites load over plain HTTP with no HTTPS.
In Northern England specifically: 343 of 1,641 reachable sites disclose PHP and 97 of those (28%) are end of life. Leeds has the highest share of the big cities — 19 of 55 disclosing sites (35%) — and Newcastle upon Tyne is 12 of 28 (43% of a smaller sample). In Northern Ireland, 9 of 40 disclosing sites (22%) are end of life.
The finding mirrors the earlier Scottish scan: most practices keep WordPress itself updated — 497 of 642 disclosing sites (77%) run the current 7.1 branch — but the PHP underneath is set by the hosting company and is left behind. Each site received one ordinary homepage request; nothing was probed or tested beyond what a browser sees, and no practice is named.
"The pattern is the same from Belfast to Sheffield: WordPress gets updated because there's a button for it, and PHP doesn't because there isn't. It is the hosting company's setting, it takes about twenty minutes to put right, and nobody is asking," said Timothy, founder of Riverbank IT Systems.
Upgrading is normally a hosting change, not a rebuild. Remote diagnosis and repair starts at £39.99 + VAT for the first 20 minutes; larger jobs are quoted in writing first.
Full findings: https://www.riverbank-systems.com/news/scottish-dental-practice-websites-unsupported-php-study-2026/ — fixes: https://www.riverbank-systems.com/security-audit/php-fixes/.
About Riverbank IT Systems: Glasgow-based IT support company founded in 2003, providing 24/7 managed IT support, Microsoft 365, cloud and cyber security services to SMEs across Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland.