I am expecting a Drupal contractor to develop our new site in Drupal 7. Drupal.org specifies PHP 5.2.4, and we have PHP 5.1.6. How critical is this? We don't want to have to update the PHP on our server unless we absolutely have to. Thanks!

Comments

You can probably get it

You can probably get it installed but some mods will break the site and you will get White Screen of Death.

You should probably go up to 5.3 to avoid any issues as specified http://drupal.org/requirements

Pedja
Drupal Geek at New Target Inc.
http://www.newtarget.com

You won't be able to use

Your PHP version is more than 6 years old. You won't be able to run most modern software on it (nor should you, since it is unsupported and potentially unsecure).
Update to PHP 5.3.