Choosing a PHP Web Host

Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 9:07am, in Misc, written by Stefan Ashwell

When looking for a host for your PHP website there are a few things you should consider before you buy. Below I go over a few things to look for when choosing PHP hosting.

PHP 4 or 5?

Hosts are gradually switching to PHP 5, and now that PHP 4 development and updates have come to an end, now is the best time to make the switch yourself. If you need time to make the switch some hosts will allow you to choose between the two, although be careful as sometimes this means PHP 5 is running in CGI mode, and so is likely to take a performance hit. I would also suggest switching to MySql 5 too.

Linux/Apache

You want to be looking at Linux hosting with Apache rather than Windows hosting. Windows hosting is usually used for ASP/.NET applications, and if PHP is installed it is likely to be buggy and have poor performance. PHP is meant to be run in a Linux environment so let's keep it that way!

Access to outside the document root

With my PHP applications I like to keep template files and other system type files outside of the document root. This is a security thing mainly, as while your files are outside the document root a visitor in a browser cannot directly access them. Some hosts don't allow you to upload outside the document root however, and in some cases it might cause errors. I would suggest looking through a host's knowledge base, or even better contacting them directly to make sure you can do this.

Scripting requirements

You might be using a downloaded PHP script, such as Wordpress etc, or you might be using something you've written yourself. Before you buy web hosting it is best to check that any scripting requirements are available. This could be GD Library for image handling, or having register globals on/off, or having PHP in safe mode or not. A downloaded piece of software will usually tell you what's required, and if it's not on their website contact a host directly and they should be able to help out and answer any questions.

General advice

The above advice is geared towards PHP hosting specifically, it goes without saying that in general you want to look for good uptime, speeds, web space, bandwidth, easy to use control panel, good customer service, customer feedback and of course value for money. It's worth checking out some forums or hosting comparison sites for reviews and user ratings too.

Hopefully this article will help you out when choosing the right hosting for your PHP site, if you can think of anything else to look for please leave a comment :)