You guys/gals are the best on here for those of us who have limited knowledge in all things web and coding. Here is my question, for those of you who have been following me know my website very simple and straightforward, and I'm sure could be made better, however for what my needs are it's working, until Friday. I was about to announce it live to my fans and as I was going over the pages, my website just froze. First thought was bad connection, but when I went to other sites I saw it was on my end. I ended up calling Blue Host support to see if they were having issues and they said they were, I was put on hold and then told that I needed to be using PHP 7.3 or 7.4 that was why things were not working. When I told them I had no idea what that was they sent me an article about it. Then she said, she "refreshed the cache" and that should help you for now, but you need to update to avoid this happening again.
I am using a Mac running OS 10.9.5 and Chrome 65, the newest I can run on this OS. I pulled up my website using my brand new iPad and everything worked fine. So that made me think it was my desktop, I then proceeded to reset the pram and cleared my cache on my browser. Went back to my site and no problems!
So my question is this, as I am working on my website, do I need to do this PHP update? From reading over the article, it looks like it's something they should be doing on their side, am I missing something? She also said to stop using this software that could be causing problems as well. Very similar to what GoDaddy told me when suspicious malware started showing up on my domain. That is why I left GoDaddy, because I felt like they were trying to scam me into buying more products from them. I have locked in 3 years of hosting with Blue Host, so I am stuck with them if this is the case because like I've stated before I can not update the OS on this desktop or I will loose all my software, which is very expensive to replace.
Right now things are working just fine, but I was wanting to see what you guys thought about this because I know those here are telling the truth about things and not trying to sell me something. Thanks in advance!
I am sure someone will pick this up and give you a better answer.
But I can see no reason why you would need to update your Macs PHP unless you are writing code with it in a depreciated code base version, that the php on your blue host site does not interpret
correctly.
But I doubt that is the case.
As far as I am aware, the PHP version for your site would be your responsibility.
This is because if the Host company changed it for everyone they hosted for, they would likely break more than a few websites for the reason I started with, which is older php code written for sites, not being compatible with the newer versions of PHP.
Therefore individual site admins can update their sites php when they feel it is safe to do so.
I think Blue host explain how to do this here. https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/php-version-selection
Now I do not know what the issue you had was, you may get a better answer if you link the article they sent you.
But your MacOS is indeed old and so is the Chrome version.
Personally I would not expect to have everything working as expected in it, due to changes in browser technology and how they function and handle things.
Thanks for the response. It sounds like it's my old OS and Browser. That link you sent is better than the one they sent me. What I'm afraid of is the line that said, your site might not run if you pick the wrong update. Another thing I do not understand about this is I've been building websites since around 1998 and never before have I heard of this PHP. I started out using Dreamweaver, then switched to Hype. I guess as more and more hacking goes on you have to keep updating to try and beat the hacks. Right now it's working fine so I will keep doing what I"m doing until I have to change something else. Again thanks for the response.
Sorry, I did laugh out loud there.. 
Mainly because of "this PHP"
I guess if you have never had a reason to use it then I really should not be surprised.
You may not use it directly but if you have plugins etc running on your site then they may be using it.
One of the issues is that plugins can have issues that allow attackers in and should always be updated.
I understand what you mean about the provider trying to scare and sell. I have had similar with my provider. They have a big stake in support and anti this and that software and I started to get loads of warnings from them telling me they discovered this and that and I should sign up for this and that. Once I investigated myself, I found I did not need the crap they where offering and the things they found where due to them actually injecting tracking shit onto my site pages for their associates . Once I pointed this out to them there was an oops moment then apologised and they gave me some free years signup.
I also promptly removed 99% of any plugins I had running, which killed of them bugging me to hook me into sales.
I do not use my site for a lot or anything important so that was not that hard for me to do.
The plugins I talk about for me at least are via wordpress plugins which I had installed for the blog part of the site.
I don't have enough information to say whether or not they are giving you incorrect info.
PHP is a server-side programming language to build dynamic website. WordPress's codebase is written in PHP, as are basically all of its plugins. WordPress updates occasionally boost the minimum version of PHP that they require to run. So if you use WordPress and performed an upgrade (or had one automatically performed on your behalf), then you may have also needed to upgrade to a newer version of PHP as well.
That said, I think the WordPress upgrader checks the version of PHP you are using and won't perform the upgrade unless it is safe.
Typically Web Hosts won't automatically upgrade your PHP version for you, because doing so could break pages you may have written in PHP yourself. You usually need to opt in via some mechanism (it may be on their config panel, in a .htaccess file, or by emailing their support). I don't know about Blue Host.
Otherwise, since you haven't heard of PHP before, then if your pages aren't running through wordpress or some other PHP-based content system, then you are not using PHP and upgrading won't matter.
Also note: unless you are doing local development, the version of PHP running on your Mac is irrelevant.
Hopefully that sheds some light.
Yes, as always you are spot on! That is good news, I was worried all my new work and design was going to be wasted. I will keep on working on my Nerd Vault and trying to bring back a virtual album liner notes something I miss on today's digital environment! I'm very thankful for your software that allows me to create my ideas without having coding knowledge!
Hah, That was pretty much what I was trying to say, badly.. sorry if that left you still wondering..