Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4? That's even true for
Yahoo.

On Sep 12, 2:28 pm, Herb <her...@mail.com> wrote:
>
> Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4?

Because they have one system setup that they worked out a few years
ago and keep repeating on all their servers. It s keep setup and
maintenance costs down.

> That's even true for Yahoo.

It should be ESPECIALLY true for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is atypical in that
it is a hardcore BSD shop (most hosting companies that offer PHP run
on Linux). So if they ever decide to upgrade their PHP, they have to
test extra carefully for any BSD-specific problems before upgrading
their production servers.

Cheers,
NC

On Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:30:26 -0700, NC <nc@iname.com> wrote:

>> That's even true for Yahoo.
>
>It should be ESPECIALLY true for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is atypical in that
>it is a hardcore BSD shop (most hosting companies that offer PHP run
>on Linux). So if they ever decide to upgrade their PHP, they have to
>test extra carefully for any BSD-specific problems before upgrading
>their production servers.

For another data point, pair.com run (Free)BSD too, and they just upgraded all
their shared hosting to PHP 5.2.3 (which works nicely).

--
Andy Hassall :: andy@andyh.co.uk :: http://www.andyh.co.uk
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space :: disk and FTP usage analysis tool

But they shouldn't be using PHP 4 by now, as PHP 4 will stop being
supported as of 31 December 2007 .

Herb <herb_k@mail.com> writes:

> Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4? That's even true for
> Yahoo.
>
Being at a hosting provider I can give you the exact
reasons. There are two huge ones:
1) Backward compatability.
2) Ability to run PHP 4 & PHP 5 at the same time.

#2 is probably the biggest show stopper on php 5 adoption
by providers. When the change occured from php 3 -> php 4, it
was possible to configure Apache servers to run both as modules
and to setup users so that files ending in .php or .php3 would
see the 'old' php3 environment. Folks wanting ot use the new stuff
could use the .php4 extension - OR - buy changing some .htaccess
mappings have all their files go to php4.

Later on after a period of warnings we gradually weaned
the folks from php 3 -> php 4 and eventually stopped all 3 support.
The GREAT thing was, if a user had a real problem on 4, they could
still use 3 on their own stuff while everybody else went to 5.

When php 5 came out it appears the developers did NOT put
a priority on being able to run both as modules at the same time.
There are some 'rube goldberg' setups where you can use proxies
or setup as a cgi -- but nothing transparent to the thousands of
web sites already in existence using php 4 just fine.

We would love to use php 5 -- but we can't break sites
on the old stuff with people who don't know how to maintain their
code and their is no 'easy' transition path.
--
John
__________________________________________________ _________________
John Murtari Software Workshop Inc.
jmurtari@following domain 315.635-1968(x-211) "TheBook.Com" (TM)
http://thebook.com/

On Sep 19, 9:23 am, John Murtari <jmurt...@thebook.com> wrote:
> Herb <her...@mail.com> writes:
> > Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4? That's even
> > true for Yahoo.
>
> Being at a hosting provider I can give you the exact
> reasons. There are two huge ones:
> 1) Backward compatability.
> 2) Ability to run PHP 4 & PHP 5 at the same time.
>
> #2 is probably the biggest show stopper on php 5 adoption
> by providers.

GoDaddy solved this problem somehow. You can choose (on per-directory
basis, using .htaccess files) whether *.php files are parsed using PHP
4 or PHP 5. Both PHP interpreters run as FastCGI executables.

Cheers,
NC

John Murtari wrote:
> Herb <herb_k@mail.com> writes:
>
>> Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4? That's even true for
>> Yahoo.
>>
> Being at a hosting provider I can give you the exact
> reasons. There are two huge ones:
> 1) Backward compatability.
> 2) Ability to run PHP 4 & PHP 5 at the same time.

I use APLus.net - and the offer both. From the control panel, switching
between the two is done with the click of a radio button.

I've been toggling back and forth like a madman to see how my stuff hold
up - and haven't noticed any problems.

>
> When php 5 came out it appears the developers did NOT put
> a priority on being able to run both as modules at the same time.
> There are some 'rube goldberg' setups where you can use proxies
> or setup as a cgi -- but nothing transparent to the thousands of
> web sites already in existence using php 4 just fine.
>
> We would love to use php 5 -- but we can't break sites
> on the old stuff with people who don't know how to maintain their
> code and their is no 'easy' transition path.

On Sep 12, 5:28 pm, Herb <her...@mail.com> wrote:
> Why do so many hosting services only offer PHP4? That's even true for
> Yahoo.


Another option is to find a place that offers you your own server, for
cheap. Hostway.com is offering dedicated servers for as little as $99
a month. I got a server from them with Ubuntu on it. I was very
pleased to have my own server, for so little money. The last company
that I worked at had their servers from (was renting) from
RackSpace for $550 a month. Compared to that, Hostway seems cheap. Of
course, Hostway is not offering the awesome level of customer service
that RackSpace offers, but most of the time I don't need it.

Once you've got your own server, you can do anything you want with
it.