One of the most common questions we get is about PHP 5.3.5 and when it will be available on our shared hosting platform. The answer to that question is, if you are using Linux hosting: right now!
As you know, we love adding new features but we hate removing them. Adding PHP 5.3.5 to our Linux hosting platform alongside PHP 4.4 and PHP 5.2, without negatively impacting our customers, was our main focus. And we’ve achieved exactly that.
It has always been easy to switch between the PHP versions. You can choose to use the PHP version switcher in eXtend if you want to turn your entire site to PHP 5.3.5 (see screen shot below).
Alternatively you can simply add the following line into a .htaccessfile in a directory within your public_html, and that’ll turn on PHP5.3.5 for just that directory (and the directories below it):
SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 53
For those of you who use our advanced features such as scheduled tasks (aka cron), then you can use the following path to the PHP 5.3.5 interpreter:
/usr/bin/php53
And, just like with our other PHP versions, if you want to add your own custom directives in your own php.ini files, you can add them at any level along the path to your PHP script, and it will include them just as version 4.4 and 5.2 do.
Resellers
You can offer the PHP switcher to your Linux hosting customers via the eXtend control panel. Just make sure the tick box next to ‘Switch PHP version’ in Configure hosting packages has been ticked.
This is good news but it would be useful if you could maybe list the common “gotchas” when moving from 5.2 to 5.3.
This is good – is there any chance you can tell us how long you intend to continue support for PHP 4?? I have a couple of sites that will rely on this until I get my code sorted. Thanks.
This is an excellent upgrade and is good for resellers too. Resellers can use this to keep up with the competition.
Max,
We’ll continue to support PHP 4 for the foreseeable future
Ricky
Any news on Windows? The Windows servers always seem to be 10 steps behind, which is sad as the Linux hosting is really good.
Danny,
Adding 5.3 to Windows is on the roadmap and isn’t too far over the horizon.
Matt
It’s not the job of the host to teach how a language works, but the job of a developer to ensure the codebase will actually work on a PHP 5.3 server before switching the live site.