If you followed our tutorial about how to import and setup Essential Grid and after you import the JSON file nothing is imported, most probably the problem is the old version of the PHP.

The Essential Grid import feature requires PHP version to be >= 5.4.

The solution is very simple: please contact your server provider and ask them if they can update your server to use PHP version 5.4 or later.

PHP 5.3 is more than 6 years old already and officially discontinued. If your hosting provider doesn’t want to update their PHP version or does not provide PHP >= 5.4, please do yourself a favor and change the hosting provider. We can recommend InMotion (you get a full year of InMotion WordPress hosting with our Theme Club).

PHP 5.4 has lots of improvements over the PHP 5.3, including speed, performance, and stability. So there are really no good reasons you would stick with 5 years old technology.

On our demo servers, we use PHP 7.1.