Running PHP5 with 1 and 1 web hosting is quite simple. All it requires is creating a new (or editing an existing) .htaccess file.
Create a .htaccess file (if one doesn’t exist) in the directory you’d like to run PHP5. Add the following lines:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
This will automatically tell the server to run .php files with PHP5 and won’t require any file-renaming.
If you don’t know about .htaccess files, they only affect the directory they are in and all subdirectories. So, for example, if you put the previous .htaccess file in a new directory under the root called phpfive, all files and folders in that directory with a .php extension will run PHP5. However, files in the root and any other folder that lacks the .htaccess file will run the default PHP4 instead. Therefore, to run PHP5 on your entire site, place the .htaccess file in the root of your site.
The other way to run PHP5 is by renaming all desired PHP5 pages to include the extension .php5. Apache automatically assigns the .php extension to PHP4, so this will manually (and repetitively) tell the server to use PHP5 on a file-by-file basis. I recommend you use .htaccess as it still offers quite a bit of control over which files use PHP5 and won’t give you an unattractive 5 at the end of all your URLs.
Internet
htaccess, PHP, web hosting
Two days ago, I was fiddling around with the FlashStuf database when I made one wrong change that cut off the last half of every news article. It also turned out that I did the last backup of my database in May, leaving 15 articles severed even after I restored what I did. I was hoping I could get a backup from the previous day sent to me without having to make a call to tech support (the horror stories were enough to make it my last resort, especially someone having to wait 5 days just to get the wrong database backup).
Nevertheless, I ended up calling them at 6 PM and requesting to have a backup from the previous day sent to me. I told them which database and from what day, and since they could use “as much information as possible,” I told them I’d like the backup from 6 PM the day before.
Now I wasn’t expecting much. I could live with 15 or so broken articles and eventually copy over the text when the Wayback Machine got to it 6 months down the road. At the end of my conversation with tech support, the guy even told me “we’ll try to get that to you soon,” and made damn sure I got the idea. But to my pleasant surprise, I received an email today with the location of my backup (uploaded to the root of my server), which had all the previous articles in-tact.
So maybe they’re not all bad. Again, as with most people, I had never had a problem with 1&1 because I never had to deal with their tech support. And the one time I had to, they were responsive and got done what I needed to be done. Maybe it was a fluke and I was just lucky to have someone who knew what they were doing on the line, but either way they’re keeping my business. And when I can get that good of support for $4/month, well I think I’m getting a pretty damn good deal.
Internet
database, web hosting
I recently discovered Zymic, a free web hosting service. I haven’t looked for free web hosting in years, but this was the first one I’ve ever noticed that actually had some good features.. PHP support, FTP, MySQL databases, and 6,000 mB of storage space. Most control panel controls actually give me more support than do the same controls on my paid-for 1&1 service.
WOW. Free? Impossible. I logged in an started messing around with it and– yeah, I should’ve known there was some kind of trade-off. For one thing the site is hardly up and running, and I can’t even get into PhpMyAdmin to work on my databases.
Basically what I’m saying is you can’t beat web hosting that you pay for. It’s not only the features, but (especially compared to free hosting like Zymic) the reliability you are paying for. And most services are so cheap, it’s really hard to resist. I use 1&1 and I pay $5 a month for 5 times the databases and 20 times the web space of Zymic. And that is plenty of space and power to run the power-house that is FlashStuf, along with my personal site, chicken-cheese.com. And in the almost 2 years I’ve been hosted with them, I’ve never had any downtime. What it comes down to is that if you have the ability to actually pay for something online, web hosting is more than worth the cost; especially when the cost is so cheap.
Internet
web hosting, Websites
