I'm shopping for a reseller host for the first time. My budget tops out at $50 or so. My primary client requires PHP5, and the other features I'm looking for are WHM/cpanel and SSL. One host I have looked at (a2hosting.com) claims to offer Flash/Shockwave support, and I plan to ask what they mean by that since my client's site will have a great deal of Flash content that I am developing. The other hosts I have narrowed my search down to are bluewho.com, webonce.com, acewebhosting.com, and crihosting.com. My question is this: What questions should I be asking these hosts before I make a decision? Obviously I would want clarification on any features that are not explained to my satisfaction on the host's webpage. What else? Is there anything I can do to sound out the support quality of a host? In the short to medium term I'm mostly doing development work, so my disk space and bandwidth requirements will be modest, but I want a host that will scale later on.

Thanks in advance!

If PHP5 is a requirement for them, then your client would probably would want SSH access as well (because they are likely a higher end developer), so ask about that. I know BlueWho provides it (and they do PHP5 on the "Edge" server).

Also, whoever you decide to go with be sure and read every little detail possible on there site. Make sure there are no hidden charges, additional monthly fees etc. Good luck, and the best to your company.

I agree that Flash/Shockwave support is a vague term. I think it's meant for the people who don't realize that it's controlled by the end-user, not the server.

First question I would ask is whether PHP5 is installed as CGI or an Apache Module, and whether it can use .php or not. If it requires .php5 and your client's script uses .php, you're in for a mess of trouble.

HTH.

I think .php and .php5 thing can be solved by Addapplication in .htaccess ..(if enabled)

Also, if your budget is $50 per month, go for a vps and install whatever you want..

Correct, with Apache there's no reason you cannot AddType .php files to run under .php5, and some hosts do provide a simple means by which do so through the control panel.

With a budget of $50/month you should be able to definitely find a quality, reputable host, to provide a solution for you.

By Flash support they may mean that they have enabled libMing in PHP, or simply may be catering to a lower-understanding market that doesn't realize any basic web hosting will support the use of flash files, much like hosts who say they support audio/video streaming, as it is the codec/player/format that supports the streaming, and not the provider, unless you're talking live streams.

Will all of your other clients applications run on PHP5? This may also be a factor in selecting a host. If they will, then you could look for a mod_php5 provider, but if you must be able to support both PHP4 and PHP5 for your clients, you would be better off going with a host who used mod_php4 with PHP5 as a CGI, or mod_php5 with PHP4 as a CGI, so you can provide for both sets of existing clients. You may also want to ask about the particular setup the host in question uses.

I hope this finds you well, and better helps you select a host who can meet your needs.

Edit: I just wanted to add that there is at least one other way the php5 support could be configured, in conjuntion with php4, and that would be to use mod_proxy to pass the connection through to a second web server. Just wanted to make sure most (if not all) configurations got mentioned, as each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

I would search the offers section or do a forum search and find some hosts then search for reviews about them. Glad to see you have a realistic budget; you wont have an issue finding a good host.

I've been hosting a web site with WebOnce for a couple of months now, and I can very confidently recommend them. The great thing is that they have a switch select feature, where you can easily switch individual domains from using php4 or php5; basically it modifies the .htaccess to use php5 if required.

I would just like to clear up something before it's even mentioned.

HostUltrix-Braondon is just Brandon now. He is no longer affiliated with HostUltrix, nor was he ever affiliated with WebOnce Technologies, except as a client.

Thanks. :)

Thanks everyone for all the advice so far!

Domainwalla, a VPS is not what I'm interested in at this point because I don't know that I'm yet up to the task of administering the thing. I'm learning as I go. Fortunately my client and I understand where we are coming from as far as that is concerned.

I'll want to have PHP4 or 5 on a subdomain by subdomain basis. My client will probably want both and don't know about my as of yet hypothetical other clients.

WO-Jacob, what would be the relative strengths and weaknesses of the 3 ways of getting both php4 and 5 you mention? I would guess that if you went mod_phpx for one and cgi for the other than the mod one would be faster. I don't know what if any advantages the cgi one would have. Then if you did the mod_proxy approach both versions of PHP could have mod_php, but you would have the extra complexity and cost of a second server. Am I reading all that right?

Originally posted by dana-b
WO-Jacob, what would be the relative strengths and weaknesses of the 3 ways of getting both php4 and 5 you mention? I would guess that if you went mod_phpx for one and cgi for the other than the mod one would be faster. I don't know what if any advantages the cgi one would have. Then if you did the mod_proxy approach both versions of PHP could have mod_php, but you would have the extra complexity and cost of a second server. Am I reading all that right?

Well, as a general rule, the mod_phpx would be faster, yes, as the runtime is loaded into memory, but if your doing a lot of cgi-based access the exec will still stay loaded in memory anyway, it just uses some extra resources to run.

mod_proxy, from my testing, is an absoutely horrible aproach, though still an 'option'. When you do mod_proxy, all of your client side details get 'transmorgified' with all of the extra proxy info, and you really have to specially code your apps to work properly with it. Though you don't need two physical servers to do the mod_proxy set up, you can simply run a second instance of apache on the same server, though at which point your probably eating up more resources than simply running php5 as a cgi in the first place.

The other difference, is mod_phpx will run as user 'nobody' with the webserver permissions, while php as a CGI will run under the user's own account. It means you can more easily do file system based things, but it also does carry the end that your website/personal files are more 'open to exploitation' than under a normal mod_phpx setup, since your php cgi application has read/write privilages instead of just read-only privileges.

In the end, if your clients need PHP4/PHP5, and you have more 'general' clients, I don't think you'll see a problem going with a host who offers mod_php4, and then PHP5 as a CGI, provided they are responsible and do not overload their services causing higher system loads than normal. If you had a majority of PHP5 clients with some PHP4 you could look for a provider that offered mod_php5 and PHP4 as a CGI, though I am willing to bet that particular combination is rather uncommon, and you may in fact want a managed VPS solution from a provider who can configure that for you, if in fact that would be something you would need.

You may also wish to ask the provider for phpinfo() outputs before signing up, and you can use that to figure out how they're running their PHP configuration. The line you need to look at is near the top, named 'Server API', and will be 'Apache' for mod_php on a linux host (using apache as the webserver of course) and 'CGI' if it is in that mode.

I hope this helps you further assess your needs and desires from your new host.

Edit: Just as a side note, I am also an avid php programmer, which is how I got into the study of php4/php5 on the same server configuration in the first place :D

Thank you for such a detailed reply!

Originally posted by dana-b
Thank you for such a detailed reply!

You are very welcome. Good luck on selecting the host that is right for you. Be sure to keep us updated from time to time on how it's going was well.

Have a wonderful evening.

Hi Jacob,
Is a WHM/cPanel setup OK now when running a PHP5 server, or any tweaking needed?

Also do you have any issues with MySQL 4.1.x or Fantastico scripts?

Your experience is much appreciated.

Cheers,

- Vince

Originally posted by hostingvince
Hi Jacob,
Is a WHM/cPanel setup OK now when running a PHP5 server, or any tweaking needed?

Also do you have any issues with MySQL 4.1.x or Fantastico scripts?

Your experience is much appreciated.

Cheers,

- Vince

WHM/cPanel runs on it's own apache instance with a seporate php module, so running PHP5 does not change WHM/cPanel at all.

I have not seen any issues with Fantastico from running MySQL 4.1.x on our servers, or from any other scripts, honestly.

Thanks :)

One of the hosts I contacted, CRI Hosting, says they run everything 100% PHP5, but that almost all the scripts they've seen have worked with both. Any opinions on this? Obviously Jacob would be a bit biased, but that's okay. :)

Originally posted by dana-b
One of the hosts I contacted, CRI Hosting, says they run everything 100% PHP5, but that almost all the scripts they've seen have worked with both. Any opinions on this? Obviously Jacob would be a bit biased, but that's okay. :)

A lot of scripts will work fine when running under PHP5. There are a few things developers can use to ensure PHP4 and PHP5 will both process their scripts, and when problems do crop up, they're usually pretty simple to fix.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying mod_php5 or only using PHP5 is a bad thing. It definitely is not. It's just that when you do run into a problem, you have to be able to fix it, and I'm not sure if all of everyone's favorite encoded scripts are set up to run perfectly under PHP5, which is why we chose to do the dual combination aproach.

If your clients all use scripts that they have 100% unencoded code base to, or know for sure run under PHP5 (especially if they are encoded scripts that you cannot fix on your own), by all means, do not exclude an only mod_php5 provider.

I've never said mod_php5 was bad, at least I don't believe I have. I just know that there's a lot of people who still only test their code in PHP4, which is why we do it the way we do.

Good on CRI Hosting though, they're helping to push into the future. It's nice to see companies pushing the latest technology as the standard, it helps the rest of us programmers out! :D

So ultimately I went with WebOnce. CRI, as stated above, only runs php5. Bluewho and Acewebhosting offer either php4 or php5, but not both concurently. A2hosting offers both concurently, but only on their older servers. They are recommending new clients use php5 only servers. Webonce seems to be the only host truly offering what I was looking for, the option to use php4 or 5 as I or my clients see fit. So that's the route that I took. It didn't hurt one bit that Jacob was just as helpful in the sales process as he was above in this thread. I'm used to rather terse replies from support at previous webhosts, and getting thought out fully formed sentences coming from the other end feels really good. Set up was very quick. We'll see how things go from here on out.

Oh, all the hosts I contacted got back to me very quickly, except acewebhosting, who took about 8 hours. I emailed everyone Sunday afternoon, so a quick response is that much more impressive. That's about all I can say firsthand about anyone but WebOnce.

Originally posted by WO-Jacob
The other difference, is mod_phpx will run as user 'nobody' with the webserver permissions, while php as a CGI will run under the user's own account. It means you can more easily do file system based things, but it also does carry the end that your website/personal files are more 'open to exploitation' than under a normal mod_phpx setup, since your php cgi application has read/write privilages instead of just read-only privileges.


Hi,
Being that you run PHP5 as a CGI module, how do you lock down the security to avaoid 'exploitation'?

In regards to my previous question, I didn't really word it very well. The question of issues with Fantastico scripts was also meant to be in relation to running PHP5, and especially running it as a CGI. I believe some PHP scripts don't like that (dotProject?).

Best wishes,

- Vince

Originally posted by hostingvince
Hi,
Being that you run PHP5 as a CGI module, how do you lock down the security to avaoid 'exploitation'?

In regards to my previous question, I didn't really word it very well. The question of issues with Fantastico scripts was also meant to be in relation to running PHP5, and especially running it as a CGI. I believe some PHP scripts don't like that (dotProject?).

Best wishes,

- Vince

Preventing exploitation in this instance would be the users responsability to run secure scripts, as would make sense. Running PHP under CGI is no more dangerous than running any perl or bash script as a CGI.

About PHP5 as a CGI and Fantastico, as we still run the standard mod_php4 I haven't spent the time to look into compatability issues with Fantastico. If someone has an issue and wants to run PHP5 on their site, we can simply revert to PHP4 for that directory while the rest of their account remains processed by PHP5. Neat huh? :)

Very good indeed Jacob.
Just add the appropriate .htaccess in any directory huh?

I'd like to test this on one of my private servers.
Care to share? ;)

- Vince

Originally posted by hostingvince
Very good indeed Jacob.
Just add the appropriate .htaccess in any directory huh?

I'd like to test this on one of my private servers.
Care to share? ;)

- Vince

We've all got to have some secrets. ;)