[PHP5] Beginning the Switch Over

We have identified a couple of test servers that we will be changing the PHP set up on. This will involve swapping the precedence of PHP versioning on the server. Where as right now, everything is handled as PHP version 4 by default. Unless you have specifically written in regarding the PHP set up on your account, all of your PHP scripts are being handled as PHP version 4.

We are scheduling this upgrade to happen sometime early next week (December 3rd – December 7th). We are planning on the upgrade happening on December 3rd, but it may be pushed back to December 4th or December 5th. We will be posting updates on this blog for more specific times regarding the upgrade. There will be no downtime involved in this upgrade.

What this switching of precedence will do is change the default setting to PHP 5. Meaning that all PHP scripts will be parsed as PHP version 5 by default. PHP version 4 will remain on the server and we will be able to switch accounts back to PHP version 4 if needed.

Please Note: We ask that you please give PHP version 5 a try. We cannot continue to support PHP version 4 indefinitely. The developers of PHP are ending the life of PHP version 4 on December 31, 2007. Security updates to PHP version 4 will only be available until August 8, 2008. After this time there will be no further updates to the PHP version 4 tree. After December 31, 2007 the only updates to PHP version 4 will be major security flaws that pop up in PHP4. Because of all of this, we do ask that you at least give PHP version 5 a try. If for some reason your scripts do not work with PHP version 5, we can switch you back to PHP version 4, but please understand that you are going to have to fix your script or update it so that it will work with PHP version 5. Support for PHP version 4 will eventually have to completely cease.

This test rollout of PHP version 5 will serve as an indicator to see just how well our client-base responds to the PHP 5 upgrade. We feel it is better to perform this upgrade on a few servers first, rather than switch all of our servers to PHP 5 at the same time. We will evaluate the responses we see from this test rollout and from that will make a decision on how to roll this out to the rest of our servers.

If major problems are encountered with this rollout on these test servers, then we will switch everything back and likely postpone the rest of the servers as well until we can adequately deal with the issues that were presented in the test environment. Depending on how the test rollout goes, we may perform another, secondary round of testing with a few servers or we may decide to roll this change out to all of our servers at once.

It is because of these reasons that we really want clients on these test servers to try PHP version 5 so that we can know what, if any, problems there may be. We have been in contact with other web hosting companies that have done this switch and problems have been minimal, so we are not anticipating a wide-range of problem, but we are taking a cautious approach to this. This is an upgrade that will have to be done sooner or later.

Accounts that will be a part of this test roll out will receive an e-mail notification shortly. It is important that you keep your contact information with us up-to-date so that you can be informed of actions such as this. If you have any questions or comments concerning this upgrade, please feel free to contact our support department or leaving us comments on the blog.

Thank You
Scott Mutter