php5 now standard?

[ryanhellyer]

I received an interesting email from HostGator today, telling me that my account would be upgraded shortly to a straight php5 account, whereas at the moment I need to specify php5 in my .htaccess file to use it.

Many hosts still offer php4 as standard. Is this move by HostGator the beginning of a total upgrade to php5 across the web?

There are still a lot of lesser used programs out there which require php4, if most web hosts don't support php4 then this will either force those programs to become php5 or they will simply not be usable for many people anymore.

Originally Posted by email

Dear HostGator clients,

As technology continues to advance and evolve, HostGator has always aimed to stay at the forefront of the technological curve. Following this trend to provide the most up-to-date hardware and software, we are proceeding with making PHP5 part of the standard working environment on all of our servers, as well as upgrading MySQL from version 4.1 to 5.0.

These upgrades will be on all new servers launched from this point forward. As of March 8th , 2008, we will begin converting current production servers to this new environment as well. We are aware that differences in PHP4 and PHP5 can lead to minor problems and instabilities in certain scripts, and are taking every measure possible to ensure your websites continue to function. This includes testing scripts that may conflict with the upgrade and automatically upgrading your code to a problem-free, stable and PHP5 compatible version. The MySQL upgrade may have minor issues as well, which will be handled in a similar manner.

This upgrade process is going to be as automated as possible, but we understand that some customers may wish to handle upgrades themselves. All servers and accounts will be upgraded to PHP5 and MySQL 5, but if you wish to handle the upgrading of any incompatible scripts yourself, please visit ( HostGator: PHP5 Opt-out ). By authenticating your login credentials on this page, you confirm that you wish leave any incompatible common scripts as they are.

With that said, only a very small percentage of customers will be affected by this, as nearly all PHP scripts have been upgraded to comply with the PHP5 standards over the past few years. MySQL 5 has also been proven stable and the upgrade will be as streamlined as possible. Of those customers still concerned or looking for more information, please read this forum post ( PHP5/SQL5 Upgrades - HostGator Peer Support Forums ) regarding the upgrade process. Any news or progress updates will be posted there.

If you are a reseller and wish to opt out of the automatic upgrade procedure, please note that all of your underlying customers will be affected by your opt-out decision.

This upgrade will help HostGator provide the most up-to-date, reliable and secure software to better meet the ever changing needs of it's customers. PHP5 and MySQL 5 provide many new features and offer much more design flexibility for scripts written with the changes in mind. In the future, we intend on upgrading to the latest available Apache versions as well. We'll be following a strict upgrade procedure to minimize any problems that could potentially occur.

Any future upgrades will follow a similar process with minimal conflicts and downtime. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation, and thanks for choosing HostGator!