Install PHP 5.5 on Centos 7

I have a Centos 7 server running apache 2.4.6 and php 5.4. I'm trying to install Magento 2 on my server for a client but am having issues.

I need to have PHP 5.5 or 5.6 installed on my server for Magento 2 to run. I cannot figure out how to upgrade to PHP 5.5 or PHP 5.6.

I don't know the difference between the two versions, so I'll take whatever I can get working !

Thanks :)

Solution

This is the procedure for PHP 5.6.

I was able to upgrade PHP 5.4.16 on CENTOS7 to version 5.6.25 with these simple steps. Important to note that i used the Software Collection Repositories.

1- Install All these new packages:

yum install centos-release-scl
yum install rh-php56
yum install rh-php56-php
yum install rh-php56-php-pdo
yum install rh-php56-php-devel
yum install rh-php56-php-mysql
yum install rh-php56-php-fpm

2- Make apache 2.4 use php-fpm

Edit that file: /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf Put that content:

<FilesMatch \.php$>
#    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
    SetHandler "proxy:fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000"
</FilesMatch>

3- Reboot services to handle php-fpm:

systemctl restart rh-php56-php-fpm
systemctl restart httpd

4- Enabling rh-php56-php-fpm service on boot time

systemctl enable rh-php56-php-fpm
systemctl enable httpd

5- Create a symlink for the new php version.

mv /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/phpOLD
ln -s /opt/rh/rh-php56/root/bin/php /usr/bin/php