By seanray on

With the release of Drupal 7, quite some discussion raised around which web hosts could provide the recommended php Versions for Drupalers (recommend to be php 5.3, but no lower than php 5.2.5).

And today, I spend sometime on connecting with some top web hosts to see which version php is installed, and below are the result.

hostgator - php 5.2.15
liquidweb - php 5.2.15
bluehost - php 5.2.13
inmotionhosting - php 5.2.14
ixwebhosting - php 5.2.14
hostmonster - php 5.2.13
fastdomain - php 5.2.13
midphase php - 5.2.9
anhosting php - 5.2.9
greengeeks php - 5.2.9

Looks like all of them could provide good support for Drupal 7, but none of them are at php 5.3. Some of them have plans to upgrade their php but it doesn't looks like something might be happened tomorrow.

In general, you still can choose one of them to start your Drupal 7 journey, and you really feel php 5.3 is the best choice for your site, then I would recommend to purchase a VPS hosting, with which you could install any version of php you want, but some linux package management knowledge will be required.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

nihonsei’s picture

nihonsei commented

Our website http://indojp.com built with Drupal 7 is hosted on bluhost.com

Website is running fine without any big problem but there are a lot of php related warning in the dblog.
1. Warning: array_flip() [function.array-flip]:
2. Warning: rmdir(/var/tmp/update-extraction/openlayers) [function.rmdir]: Permission denied in drupal_rmdir() (line 2277 of /public_html/includes/file.inc).

I feel it is too early to convert Drupal 6 -> Drupal 7. I hope low priced web hosting companies will also upgrade the php version in near future.

It is better to wait for some more weeks until these sites annouce that they upgraded to Drupal 7.

1. http://drupal.org
2. http://buytaert.net/
3. http://acquia.com/
4. http://lullabot.com/

bluhost.com is providing php 5.2.14.

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

I agree we should wait upgrading to Drupal 7 if we plan to use a shared hosting solution. This actually is a tough desiction for Web Hosting service provider to deploy php 5.3, as it might cause satisfaction issue to their old customers who might need a lower version php.

timonweb’s picture

timonweb commented

Don't even try to run D7 on a shared hosting. You will be extremelly disappointed.

My web production and development blog. I do Drupal development.

nihonsei’s picture

nihonsei commented

Now bluhost.com is providing php 5.2.16.

nihonsei’s picture

nihonsei commented

Now our site is hosted on Linode.com.

nihonsei’s picture

nihonsei commented

I again moved my site to Bluehost from Linode, after testing Load Time on pingdom tool. I found load time is better on Bluehost and grade is 99, while it was 87 on Linode.

Just checked my status report page and found that bluehost is providing
php 5.2.17; PHP memory limit 128 M; Database system version 5.1.66-community-log,
while on Linode I found PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4; PHP memory limit 128 M; Database system version 5.5.24-0ubuntu0.12.04.1.

nihonsei’s picture

nihonsei commented

Website's performance is File uploading was very good on Linode.

end user’s picture

end user commented

I just got rid of my dedicated server (Netelligent.ca) of 4 years and switched to one of their higher reseller pacakage. This php is Php 5.2.14. I've installed two D7 sites. Haven't noticed too much speed reduction but the D6 sites are a bit faster to load. Could also be the admin bar that is causing the slow down.

steve hanson’s picture

steve hanson commented

Most of us are not willing to make 5.3 be the production PHP environment for several reasons:

1. It's not supported yet in most of the production-ready Linux distributions - so your host would need to make a special build of PHP rather than using the PHP that is supported in the distribution.
2. A lot of web apps don't perform properly in 5.3, including still some Drupal 6 contrib modules - hosts often don't have the most recent PHP or other software versions because they want to support what will work best with the majority of customers - sometimes that means hanging back a little.
3. Drupal 7 runs just fine on 5.2.5 or later.

I think you'll be seeing a lot of hosts making 5.3 at least optionally available on their hosting plans later in 2011. We'll probably have it available as an option in a few months, but it's likely to be on servers that are dedicated to running 5.3.

Steve Hanson
Publisher Eye On Dunn County
https://eyeondunn.com

steve hanson’s picture

steve hanson commented

Realize that the way most Linux distributions work, the PHP version isn't necessarily an indication of bug fixes and particularly of security fixes - if your host is running the supported packages from the distribution they are using, they will likely be an older version of PHP that has patches rolled into it to fix egregious bugs and security holes -- so for example, we're running 5.2.17 PHP, but it has various patches rolled into it.

Steve Hanson
Publisher Eye On Dunn County
https://eyeondunn.com

bionitech’s picture

bionitech commented

Drupal 7 requires at least PHP version 5.2.5.

Many of the sites listed above are 5.2.1x, yet you say "Looks like all of them could provide good support for Drupal 7".

Am I missing something here?

end user’s picture

end user commented

5.2.1x is newer than 5.2.5 You're probably thinking 5.2.1.x

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

hi Bioitech,
All the versions listed in above are over 5.2.5, from php version perspective, it should be good to run your Drupal 7 core application (few contributed drupal7 modules might require php 5.3+).

And just get to know that Hostgator have setup Dual php environment in their shared hosting with both php 5.3.3 and php 5.2.15 enabled (by default it's php 5.3). This is the first big web hosting start providing php 5.3+. It should be a great news for all drupaler as Drupal 7 hosting environment issue has been a big bothering for us since the release of it.

markemil.moreto’s picture

markemil.moreto commented

I was in the middle of trouble due to this headache about php versions. But luckily with few contact details on the support admin center, they upgrade my server into latest one! I used drupal 7.22 and no problem at all.

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

Do you mean HostGator, and you are an old customer of them? I think all their new customers should come with php 5.3x by default

ivrh’s picture

ivrh commented

redy.host is your best option. Servers are in Australian datacenters, full support Drupal 6 and 7. hardened PHP, WAF, security monitoring and alerting, drush, composer, git are fully supported:
http://www.redyhost.com.au/web-hosting/application-hosting/drupal

SSH access, containerised environment for VPS-like tenant isolation (or get a VPS).

Full support of various Drupal distributions. Prices are affordable!

Need real server security? Get in touch

lapis666’s picture

lapis666 commented

Hello guys,

Today I search for hosting companies which are suitable for Drupal and found https://nextpointhost.com/web-hosting.php

This company offer 6 php versions which can be changes from their cPanel per directory basic. It mean that mydoamain.com can be for example with PHP 5.2.17. mydomain2.com can be with PHP 5.3.8 and etc. Also php version can be changed and in this basic - mydoamain.com can be with PHP 5.2.17, but mydoamain.com/testdir/ can be with different php version and etc.

I think that this hosting is very useful for guys like me which host Drupal. Wordpress and etc CMS softwares which required different php versions.

Supported versions on Nextpointhost site are:

PHP 4.4.9
PHP 5.0.5
PHP 5.1.6
PHP 5.2.17
PHP 5.2.17 with Suhosin
PHP 5.3.8

I have not seen any other company to offer such a thing! Anyone else have you seen such a thing?

jamesoakley’s picture

jamesoakley
Primary language English
Location North Yorkshire, UK
commented

However, PHP 4 was end of life in 2007. PHP 5.2 was discontinued when PHP 5.4 came out, although many hosts still use it. 5.0 and 5.1 have been discontinued for some time.

The only versions that PHP themselves currently maintain (including security fixes) are 5.3.10 and 5.4.0. There is a use case for 5.2.17 still, but anything older than that should not be used - it's inviting hackers to come and play to use outdated PHP installations. Seriously - what other CMS are you using that requires you to use PHP 4.4, or 5.0?

I'd also be moderately concerned that they still run 5.3.8 - 5.3.9 contained some security fixes.

As I say - looks good on paper. There are more factors that make a good host than just the number of PHP versions they offer. Running up to date versions matters more - and things like the quality of support and not having overloaded servers are also key.

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lapis666’s picture

lapis666 commented

If you had read a more detailed site of nextpointhost you will see that they are the only hosting on the market which offer 99.9999% Service Level Agreement with Credit of 50 times the fees for any period of lack of availability.

They are the only Hosting company offering "NEVER Reboot" and "Always Up To Date" service protections - available for free for all plans!

Also they offer for free "Automatic overload prevention", DDoS protection and etc things that no other company don't offers.

I am a customer of their services for two years and am very pleased. I strongly recommend them!

jamesoakley’s picture

jamesoakley
Primary language English
Location North Yorkshire, UK
commented

Today I search for hosting companies which are suitable for Drupal and found...

I am a customer of their services for two years

so which is it?

Would you mind naming the domain you've had with them for 2+ years?

The SLA only extends to border routers and switches - they are rarely the point of failure.

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lapis666’s picture

lapis666 commented

@JamesOakley

From long time ago I'm not entered here. Perhaps my answer are not interested now, but let to explain in more details.

Currently I'm client of https://nextpointhost.com/home.php from 3 years, but from 1 year I host with them Drupal site. Use their services to host other sites powered by Joomla or written by me.

The SLA is valid for whole infrastructure including their shared servers. Their SLA cover everything not only routers or switches. That's why I choose them. Their SLA is real 99.9999% (for my sites all monitoring systems show 100%) not as many other hosting companies with limited coverage.

jamesoakley’s picture

jamesoakley
Primary language English
Location North Yorkshire, UK
commented

Since you've come back to the discussion, let me add some detail.

You said:

The SLA is valid for whole infrastructure including their shared servers. Their SLA cover everything not only routers or switches. That's why I choose them. Their SLA is real 99.9999% (for my sites all monitoring systems show 100%) not as many other hosting companies with limited coverage.

Now look at https://nextpointhost.com/service-level-agreement.php:

Nextpointhost guarantees 99.9999% network availability in any given calendar month. The network will be deemed 'available' if Nextpointhost’s border routers and switches are available and responding to Nextpointhost monitoring tools in a non-degraded manner.

Also, 99.9999% is an interesting number:

  • 99% = no more than 7.5 hours a month
  • 99.9% = no more than 45 minutes a month
  • 99.99% = no more than 4.5 minutes a month
  • 99.999% = no more than 27 seconds a month
  • 99.9999% = no more than 2.5 seconds a month

How do you measure that? You'd have to monitor availability every 3 seconds at a minimum. There are various public uptime monitoring services you can subscribe to, the most frequent monitoring from which is every 30 seconds. Munin monitors every 5 minutes, Nagios reasonably can be made to monitor every 1-2 minutes.

It seems to me that when you get a figure that high it's almost meaningless to monitor. You could never prove they'd broken it, they can never keep track. It's marketing. Nothing more.

There's more to this though. What is the rebate under their SLA?

Credit of 50 times the fees for any period of lack of availability for a cloud server or network uptime lasting more than 15 minutes as measured from the time at which you validly inform us at support@nextpointhost.com or the time at which our monitoring systems detect the lack of availability, whichever is earlier. (emphasis added);

So you can only actually get any money back if a single period of downtime exceeds 15 minutes. That means that the downtime for the month would have to be at least 15 minutes, so they only actually pay out if their uptime drops below 99.965%.

Given (i) they cannot measure it, (ii) you cannot prove it, (iii) it only covers BGP and core routing, and (iv) they won't pay out at that level - I really do fail to see how that figure of 99.9999% has any meaning.

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rebelwebdev’s picture

rebelwebdev commented

I would recommend checking information about the server itself. Just because you show it run Drupal, by the PHP version can they handle your website? You should ask about Server Load Indexes. These are three numbers about the server and the load on the processors. The first number is your 1 minute index this number, the second is a 5 minute index, and the third a 15 minute. These numbers should never exceed the number of cores on the server (This would mean that data is waiting to be processed). You never want to have a hosting company that overloads their servers.

lapis666’s picture

lapis666 commented

I'm agree with everything which you say, but you can not control the load of the shared server where many other sites are hosted. In cPanel you can see the current server load, but you can not see how many CPU cores have the specific server.

With other words if one shared server have 8 cores normal load should not exceed 8, but if the server have 4 cores the normal load should not exceed 4. That's why on shared hosting we can not understand is the server is overloaded or not.

RandyP’s picture

RandyP commented

I wanted a Drupal service provider that offered LAMP+D updates, but at a reasonable cost. I have had 2 sites with hosting managed by Sitebasin for over a year, and a third site with them for 8 month. Recommended for responsive and knowledgeable customer service. They also helped me find and fix some bad code on my site and waived the charges for the first hour of service.

yngens’s picture

yngens commented

Drupion.com supports PHP 5.3.2, MySQL 14.14 besides lot's of other Drupal 7 critical features: http://drupion.com/support/documenation/server-settings

ppro’s picture

ppro
Primary language Norwegian Nynorsk
Location Stockholm
commented

I suggest Linode.com, they offer cheap VPS servers. you can configure your server the way you like to and they have great web panel as well.

I have been hosting all my sites and customers sites on their cheapest vps for more than two years and I really love them.

great and fast support, the only thing to remember is: it's un-managed but they have a great wiki with lots of info which helps noobs like me :) at first.

--------------
web-hosting services help: SwedData

lashamaro’s picture

lashamaro commented

I guess lots of hosting providers support Drupal installation and it's usually included in cPanel.

euro-space.net’s picture

euro-space.net commented

Drupal installation mostly comes with the hosting package by default. Regarding PHP , there're .htaccess file where from you can switch easily between versions.
It doesn't tell the hosting provider is great because they have latest PHP on the server, contrary, sometimes newest PHP releases still require some time of development and bug fixes , so it's recommended to switch slowly.

mariusprice’s picture

mariusprice commented

amazon ec2 and have full control and cost almost as a shared hosting.

tonysq’s picture

tonysq commented

How about how to set up dev/stage subdomains on blue host and how to Git with it? Or installing drush on blue host? Or pulling off multisite with them?
My Website : https://taihinhnendepnhat.net/