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  1. #1

    Is it common for companies to stick with PHP 5.3.x on shared (reseller) hostings?

    Currently, there are three versions of PHP's available: 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5. The 5.3 version is not actively developed anymore, and everyone is urged to use version 5.4 or 5.5. However, it seems that most web hosting companies still stick with PHP 5.3, including my current hosting at Turnkey Internet.

    I have asked their support team about upgrading, and all I was told was that they are still doing some testings on upgrading their PHP version. The testing has been going on for close to a year.

    My subscription will come to an end in a month. If I can find a hosting with PHP 5.4 or 5.5 support and a decent price, I'll probably migrate. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to stick with older version a bit longer. An alternative would be to go with VPS or colocation.

    My question is: Is it a common thing for most shared hosting to use PHP 5.3? One company told me that the limitation is with the PHP bundled with CPanel, but I don't think that's the case because there are companies who support multiple PHP versions.



    Thank you.
    -stndn.

  2. #2
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    I am not sure why you think most hosts are still on 5.3.

    In WHM cPanel classes 5.5 as EXPERIMENTAL so I do not think many shared hosts will be running that.

    At a guess I would say most cPanel hosts would be on 5.4

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by BeZazz View Post
    I am not sure why you think most hosts are still on 5.3.

    In WHM cPanel classes 5.5 as EXPERIMENTAL so I do not think many shared hosts will be running that.

    At a guess I would say most cPanel hosts would be on 5.4
    Thank you for your input.

    I asked several hosting companies, and I get more PHP 5.3 than PHP 5.4. Of course, I didn't go to the big name hostings since my budget is limited and it's only for personal projects, so that might explain why.

    I guess I'll start looking for PHP 5.4 hosting, then.


    Thank you.
    -stndn.

  4. #4
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    PHP 5.3 near out of life but some company use it. We use it too but not as defautl option and only option. We use 5.2 as default but user can use PHP 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 based on whole www folder or only on certain folders. We think this give users more choice.

  5. #5
    We have a couple customers whose software won't run on 5.4 yet. We're working with them to get the software up enough to go on 5.4. Once that's complete, we'll switch to 5.4 as default.

  6. #6

    Is it common for companies to stick with PHP 5.3.x on shared (reseller) hostings?

    The biggest reason is probably PHP Suhosin. It's only available on the 5.3 branch currently. That may be why a lot of the companies you talk to don't use the newer versions.

  7. #7
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    Lots of sites don't work on 5.3 later, or 5.4. So you'll find a lot of hosts running 5.3 at the moment. Unfortunately the PHP team tends to break things more than they should in my (largely uninformed) opinion. Obviously, we need to upgrade, and want to upgrade, but when 10% - 20% of your sites break, it's not so easy!

  8. #8
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    There are providers that still offer nothing but 5.2.
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  9. #9
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    Mates I talk to in the industry are all on 5.4, 5.3 is a risk and yes like someone said above suhosin isn't compatible, and a few other changes were made in 5.4 so some providers are worried about it. 5.5 is new and as said above, a few scripts aren't compatible on it yet sadly.

    Modern companies today use Cloudlinux and that allows the end user to pick a PHP version for them, selecting Native picks the best one for the application. But yeah doesn't surprise me that some haven't upgraded yet.

  10. #10
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    A lot of Hosting companies actually have the default PHP version as a quite old one. What you really want to be asking is if they provide a choice of PHP version to their clients.

    Most Hosting Companies actually do provide more than the default version. So if you want/need a specific version then asking the host not only the default version, but what optional version they have available.

    If you look around, you can find providers that offer 4.4, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 (I kid you not on the 4.4!)

    There are quite a few (3rd party) reasons why everyone is not running 5.5 and have older versions as the default.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by brianoz View Post
    Unfortunately the PHP team tends to break things
    This would be an incorrect statement.
    The correct statement:


    Quote Originally Posted by brianoz View Post
    Unfortunately developers tend to break things and blame everyone else
    I'm not saying that the PHP team doesn't break things (they do, we're all human), but more often than not, it's the developer not following practices and standards that tend to break them. Things like
    1. Using functions that have known obsolescence (mysql_xx, globals, etc)
    2. Not writing clean code

    Now, is it common for hosts to stick with old versions? Yes. 5.2 -> 5.3 was going to be a nightmare, and break all kinds of code. 5.4 didn't really do THAT much there, but it did a bit. 5.5 brought the hammer down on the mysql_xx stuff, so you can bet people will avoid that for a while.

    <edit>
    This is one of the reasons that I really love CloudLinux, honestly. With phpselector (available to CL customers), you can choose what version of php you want to use. I'd MUCH rather go there than to roll out an old version of php server wide, keep the client in their 'cage' as it were.
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  12. #12
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    PHP 5.5 current version is an experimental version as suggested by cPanel. So, Its not recommended to use on a shared server. Many script may break on this PHP version.

    PHP 5.4 latest stable was released on 17 Oct 2013
    And 5.3 latest stables was released on 11 Jul 2013
    So, you cannot say that 5.3 is very old compared to 5.4

    If you need PHP 5.5 for some development work, you can get a cheap VPS for 4-5$
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  13. #13
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    Is it common for companies to stick with PHP 5.3.x on shared (reseller) hostings?

    Quote Originally Posted by ravi_9793 View Post
    So, you cannot say that 5.3 is very old compared to 5.4
    5.3 is EOL, it's outdated. Move on
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  14. #14
    Thank you all for your input.

    I guess I can understand the need for supporting software which still depends on older PHP version. Sometimes it might be the developer's fault. However, there are also cases where the program is no longer being developed despite it being widely used.

    I agree that allowing users to select the preferred PHP version would be the best choice. I have looked at several hosts and I think I have narrowed my choice. Now I just have to wait patiently for the upcoming Thanksgiving deals

    I have never considered VPS due to the lack of knowledge in maintaining servers. I'll stick with reseller hosting for now, but might keep VPS in mind should the need arise.


    Thanks again everyone.
    -stndn.

  15. #15
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    The main reason hosts cannot upgrade PHP is, that will break many installations on a shared server. That says it, there are still hosts who offer PHP 5.2 by default because that will break some legacy applications. Your best bet if you really want to move to PHP 5.4 is to move to a VPS or move to a server on which multiple PHP versions are allowed.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steven View Post
    There are providers that still offer nothing but 5.2.
    I'm pretty sure I saw more shelled/injected/scripted/bypassed/Apache symlinks in 5.2.17 than I had in quite some time. I took most of 2011 off to teach myself the ways of virtualization, and in 2012, when I came back, it seemed like it was a busy time for .17 in particular. There were a couple of times last year where I'd be on legitimate sites and walk right into an old c99, and I'm pretty sure that was the one where flaws were uncovered not long after being EOL'd... have to back and look at the old CVEs for that release.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by jfnllc View Post
    I'm pretty sure I saw more shelled/injected/scripted/bypassed/Apache symlinks in 5.2.17 than I had in quite some time. I took most of 2011 off to teach myself the ways of virtualization, and in 2012, when I came back, it seemed like it was a busy time for .17 in particular. There were a couple of times last year where I'd be on legitimate sites and walk right into an old c99, and I'm pretty sure that was the one where flaws were uncovered not long after being EOL'd... have to back and look at the old CVEs for that release.
    The problem is more likely crappy out dated scripts than php directly.
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  18. #18
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    PHP 5.3 will still receive security fixes well into 2014 anyway.
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    Quote Originally Posted by stndn View Post
    If I can find a hosting with PHP 5.4 or 5.5 support and a decent price, I'll probably migrate. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to stick with older version a bit longer.
    Is there any specific reason you are looking for php version 5.4 instead of 5.3?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr_Michael View Post
    Is there any specific reason you are looking for php version 5.4 instead of 5.3?
    5.3 is EOL, it's dead, stick a fork in it, it's done. 5.4 will be headed there shortly, but it's got some life left in it.
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  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by twhiting9275 View Post
    5.3 is EOL, it's dead, stick a fork in it, it's done. 5.4 will be headed there shortly, but it's got some life left in it.
    I understand it. But I am asking from the client's perspective.
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  22. #22
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    PHP 5.3 isn't EOL yet. An end-of-life announcement is expected sometime around the first of the year. I would expect PHP 5.3 to go end-of-life around June or July 2014. At that point, yes, you will need to stop using PHP 5.3.

    But right now, it's safe to use PHP 5.3. Just because it's not being updated often doesn't mean that there are any problems with. PHP 5.3 is mature. It's not getting any new features written into it. It is not changing, it is stable. It will still continue to get security fixes, should any security problem arise, but no new features.

    All that being said, every web hosting company should be making plans to move to PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5. You don't want got caught with your pants down when PHP 5.3 officially goes EOL.

    This is similar to the cPanel versioning. Just because cPanel is out to 11.40, doesn't mean that 11.38 and 11.36 are no longer valid. It is true that cPanel 11.36 is approaching it's end of life (January 2014) but security fixes are still being released for cPanel 11.36. But anybody still using cPanel 11.36 needs to be making plans to upgrade to either cPanel 11.38 or cPanel 11.40 soon.

    If you stay behind on release versions, as long as it is a release that is still supported and not EOL, you often have less updates to worry about and less worry of something breaking. PHP 5.3 has been through the ringer, so to speak, so if there were major issues with PHP 5.3, it likely would have been found by now. You can't say that about PHP 5.5 (and to a lesser extent, PHP 5.4).

  23. #23
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    Switching to PHP 5.4 breaks a lot of applications since many of them have been developed in 5.3 and cannot run on 5.4. Surely, there will be a time when all hosting companies should be prepared to force the customers to upgrade their applications because 5.3 will no longer be supported.
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  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by SPaReK View Post
    PHP 5.3 isn't EOL yet.
    Yes it is. 5.3 has been EOL since March 2013
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  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by twhiting9275 View Post
    Yes it is. 5.3 has been EOL since March 2013
    Please note that the PHP 5.3 series will enter an end of life cycle and receive only critical fixes as of March 2013.

    End-of-life cycle is not the same thing as end-of-life.

    http://php.net/archive/2013.php#id2013-07-11-1

    This will be the last regular release of the PHP 5.3 series. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4 or PHP 5.5. The PHP 5.3 series will receive only security fixes for the next year.

    https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php53eol

    31 votes for One year with security fixes only, announce with 5.5 final release. PHP 5.5.0 was released on 20-Jun-2013

    PHP 5.3 should go end-of-life around June/July 2014, one year after PHP 5.5.0 was released.

    I would expect a more formal announcement around January 2014, maybe December 2013. It is not end-of-life yet. (But it is getting there).

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