Hi all,
if you deployed a new droplet (digital ocean) , or EC2 (amazon). By default, it's set up with PHP 5.5.9. Now most php package requires 5.6 as minimum due to many problems in 5.5.9
In this short tutorial we will guide you through upgrading php from 5.5.9 to php 5.6




first add the php repository which contain php 5.6 and php 7

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update

install php5.6 and main modules

sudo apt-get install php5.6 php5.6-mbstring php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-mysql php5.6-xml

the next step is very important to make your webserver read the new php5.6 instead of the old one

sudo a2dismod php5
sudo a2enmod php5.6

finally restart apache

sudo service apache2 restart

now php 5.6 should be working correctly

php -v