Network Solutions does NOT support Drupal

By Jerimee on 21 May 2007 at 18:06 UTC

Network Solutions is unable to host Drupal sites for at least two reasons:

1) PHP is run as a cgi script and this causes the Apache modules to act atypically
2) PHP does not allow cron jobs, so cron.php will not run

This is a shame because Network Solutions is great host for those that value customer support. Network Solutions is playing around with the idea of virtual private servers, but do not yet offer them.

Comments

RE: Network Solutions does NOT support Drupal

nhss commented 25 May 2007 at 22:08

I'm sorry if my reply sounds a bit rude, but what you have listed above isn't really making any sense.

1) PHP is run as a cgi script and this causes the Apache modules to act atypically

PHP is either running as CGI or as an apache module. If it runs as CGI it has nothing to do with the apache modules, which will/won't work regardless how php is ran.

2) PHP does not allow cron jobs, so cron.php will not run

PHP cannot allow cron jobs at all. Cron (and its daemon crond) is an option on *nix type of OS that allows certain commands to be executed at a specific time. Again, cron has nothing to do with php here. May be php is not enabled to be run as a cli? But then .. if the php is compiled as a CGI then you should be able to do it. What you will need to put as a cron command would be:

/usr/local/bin/php -f /home/directory/public_html/cron.php

You need to edit the above line to fit your hosting parameters. The first one is the full path to the php executable and the second one is the full path to your cron.php script.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Network Solutions, not at all! I actually dislike them, as I've been forced to use their ad-laden website whenever I need to do a WHOIS on a domain registered by them.

If there is any particular error you are experiencing, let me know and I will try to help you setup the cron and your Drupal.

Regards,
Al

Network Solutions and Drupal

hdaugus commented 30 May 2007 at 16:41

We were looking to make the transition from canned webdesign (I currently use ImageCafe through Network Solutions) to a more powerful and flexible solution. Drupal was recommended to us. I'm going to have a huge learning curve to go through - I'm just a step up from a beginner - but need to make the jump for future projects for our company and I'm a fast learner. We currently have webhosting through Network Solutions. I tried to install Drupal through our Network Solutions site according to the Drupal instructions, but so far have been unsuccessful. After reading the above posts I now question whether Network Solutions is compatible in the first place.

Assuming that you have a really green Drupal user, what would you suggest someone like me do if they want to get up and running on Drupal and learn the basics as soon as they can? Should I maybe get a tutuor and someone to help with the initial setup - I live in Los Angeles.

All advice is greatly appreciated. I can understand that it's probably frustrating for you guys who are working at an incredibly higher level to deal with a newbie like me, but I'd be very grateful for your advice.
Thanks so much for your time.

=-=

VM commented 30 May 2007 at 16:48

To begin working with drupal you can create a server environent on a local PC usingh XAMMP, or WAMP or something of the like. this will also give you some sysadmin knowledge which seriously can't hurt.

As far as the host itself goes, I'd seek out a new host and move your site to it. You can also consider Leaving the existing site in place on network solutions and build the new site on a new host, then when ready, shift your DNS over to the new site, and walla, your done.

With regards to tutoring, of course you can do so. It's not uber cheap though depending on your needs, and the time you need alotted.

give a noob a break!

Jerimee commented 4 June 2007 at 17:36

Thanks for correcting this, let me try to see if I can say it better.

Network Solutions runs php as CGI. This (apparently) is less than ideal for Drupal.
Network Solutions does not allow cron jobs at all. It is expressly forbidden on Network Solutions servers.

Any rate, as a noob I tried rather hard to get Network Solutions to run Drupal. After spending 10+ hours talking with tech support and reading forums and futzing with stuff, I've concluded that if you want to run Drupal, better not use Network Solutions.

Clean URLs with Network Solutions as a host

kreynen commented 24 June 2007 at 04:54

The clean URL issue with Network Solutions came a few months ago...

http://drupal.org/node/145522

No resolution in that thread. I need to either figure out how to get clean URL working with Network Solutions or move a site off of that host.

Enable the $base_url in

fmitchell commented 7 August 2008 at 04:25

Enable the $base_url in settings.php.

This fixes clean_urls for Network Solutions

--
Fredric
http://brightplum.com

Gave up on Network Solutions

kreynen commented 27 June 2007 at 17:49

We moved the site we were developing to ANHosting, a host with a PHP5 that supports Clean URLs.

My experience with Network Solutions was insane. After several emails describing the problem in a way anyone familiar with configuring a web server should understand, I was told I'd have to call their technical support number. When I called, I assumed that my attempts to solve the problem would have be noted somewhere and I would start with someone who understood the issue. No. I started with someone who didn't know anything about .htaccess or mod_rewrite.

According to phpinfo(), our Network Solutions server was configured with...

PHP Version 4.4.7
System: Linux vux34 2.6.15.6
Configure Command: './configure' '--prefix=/usr' '--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--prefix=/usr/services/vux' '--enable-track-vars' '--enable-inline-optimization' '--with-zlib' '--with-openssl' '--enable-bcmath' '--with-bz2' '--with-curl' '--enable-dba' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-dbx' '--enable-ftp' '--with-gettext' '--with-iconv' '--enable-exif' '--enable-mbstring' '--with-pic' '--without-pear' '--enable-cli' '--enable-cgi' '--with-mysql=/usr/services/vux/mysql' '--with-inifile' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--with-db4' '--with-flatfile' '--enable-calendar' '--with-readline' '--with-gdbm' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-png-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-mime-magic' '--with-dom' '--with-dom-xslt' '--with-dom-exslt' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-mhash' '--with-pspell' '--with-xmlrpc' '--enable-wddx' '--enable-xslt' '--with-xslt-sablot' '--enable-fastcgi' '--enable-memory-limit' '--with-zip' '--build=i686-pc-linux-gnu'
Server API: CGI/FastCGI

If someone knows how to configure Clean URLs with this configuration, you should ask Network Solutions for some $$$ because they don't know and they are losing customers because of it.

funny i'm runing drupal on Network Solutions

mastale commented 30 October 2007 at 03:55

no problems at all, running latest Drupal on Network Solutions.

drupal 5.X

ggroger commented 9 November 2007 at 00:22

Drupal works fine on all Network Solutions hosting plans?

I that a Question?

jgreenplate commented 13 November 2007 at 18:07

Im not sure if you are making a statement or a question here. Does it work or not? I have been unable to get clean URLs to work correctly.

You may not be experiencing

charlie-s commented 3 March 2010 at 00:14

You may not be experiencing problems, per se, but how is the speed / performance?

My experience with NetSol is that MySQL connections take up to 3 seconds before data starts flowing. This makes Drupal page loads very tiresome.

Running cron on Network Solutions

piano commented 9 May 2009 at 01:42

I hope this helps out anyone who had troubles like I did.
To run the cron job on Network Solutions:
1. log into you account

2. Go to the "Webhosting" tab
then to the "Configurations" tab
then to "Scheduled Tasks" tab

3. Click on the "add" and put in
wget -O - http://www.Your_domain_name/cron.php

This worked for me and everything is running smoothly now.

Thank you so much for this,

rachelexodus commented 9 July 2009 at 17:10

Thank you so much for this, it worked perfectly. I found that my cron.php was in my drupal folder, though, so I had to change it slightly to:

wget -O - http://www.Your_domain_name.com/drupal/cron.php

Depending on what folder you set your drupal installation to be (you configure this when you install drupal in network solutions) you may have to change /drupal to your specific folder. I believe yourdomain/drupal is the default, though.

~Rachel

Network Solutions Drupal 7 - php.ini, .htaccess, settings.php

BrianLewisDesign commented 25 July 2012 at 22:09

Network Solutions... not awesome for Drupal 7. All files uploaded with FTP get wrong permissions by default. You need a bunch of custom server settings to get Drupal 7 working without 404, 403, forbidden, admin access denied, and clean URLs, memory limit, or session errors. They have wasted a couple days of my time this week. I read that they are slow and oversell shared hosting, but I am still under development, can't confirm that yet.

Drupal 7 settings for network solutions:
--
php.ini (in the cgi-bin directory above the htdocs web root folder)
Lots of fun server settings here.

register_globals = off;
upload_max_filesize = 20M;
post_max_size = 96M;
memory_limit = 128M;
output_buffering = 2048;
magic_quotes_gpc = 0;
session.auto_start = 0;
mbstring.http_input = pass;
mbstring.http_output = pass;
mbstring.encoding_translation = 0;

--
.htaccess (in drupal install directory)
Use drupal default .htaccess, and uncomment the RewriteBase including your folder name if it's a subfolder of htdocs.

RewriteBase /myfolder

--
settings.php (755 the permissions temporarily so FTP works)
Comment out the $cookie_domain, and uncomment the $base_url and put your URL.

$base_url = 'http://mydomain.com';  // NO trailing slash!

--
Hope this saves some time.

To further add, even if not

geefin commented 19 November 2014 at 05:10

To further add, even if not running in a subdirectory, but in the base htdocs, uncomment the Rewritebase and leave as

Rewritebase /

Otherwise you may see a lot of connection reset error messages.

Mostly Successful

chrisfromredfin

he/him/his

English

Portland, Maine

commented 15 November 2007 at 16:10

I'm currently running Drupal 5.2 on a Network Solutions shared host. Everything is working, including Clean URL's, it's just running BUTT SLOW.

Think it's just the load on the shared host or is there something else I'm missing - is everyone else's pretty darn slow?

.cw.

Second that emotion

cjeich commented 16 November 2007 at 23:20

I was able to get the install to work with Network solutions, but there was a lot of monkeying around that I had to do.

I ended up having to set the base url under settings.php to get clean url's working.

Also the install runs crazy slow... turning up the performance options helped a little, but still much slower than other hosts.

Clean URLs on Network Solutions shared hosting HELP!

carlnunes commented 23 May 2008 at 08:43

I am unable to enable clean urls while on network solutions. Please share with us your fix for making this work; PLEASE!

^^^^^ Look

fmitchell commented 7 August 2008 at 04:25

^^^^^

Look up!

--
Fredric
http://brightplum.com

Found answer to Install Problem

tenten71 commented 25 August 2008 at 22:08

Click here to read solution.

www.tenten71.com for web design needs.

Yup

Dane Powell commented 22 June 2010 at 20:44

Technically, Network Solutions supports Drupal. Practically, it's a no-go - I'm seeing page execution times in the 5-10s range, and individual queries taking over 100 ms. I guess that's technically usable but I imagine it'd cost you quite a few impatient visitors. Sadly however, it's not the absolutely SLOWEST service I've used, so I guess there's a silver lining for you :P

Possible config to improve performance on Network Solution

amurobo commented 28 February 2011 at 03:04

Hey guys, I got the same problem with Drupal SLOW performance on Network Solution, I ended up doing the followings and it turns out A LOT faster imo. Hope this is a possible solution for some of you.

1. Edit php.ini in cgi-bin directory, I tested the following (not sure if this will work for others, I just copy and paste from here and there without digging much into what they really means behind each of them)

register_globals = Off
safe_mode = Off
upload_max_filesize = 5M
output_buffering = 4096
memory_limit = 64M

max_execution_time =60
max_input_time = 60
default_socket_timeout = 60
track_errors = Off
html_errors = Off
ignore_user_abort = Off
log_errors = Off

mysqlnd.collect_statistics = Off
mysqlnd.collect_memory_statistics = Off
magic_quotes_gpc = Off
magic_quotes_runtime = Off
magic_quotes_sybase = Off

2. Go to performance option do what make sense (enabled Block cache, CSS, javascript, and I also disabled the page compression - I am thinking I can save some CPU power since my page content is not a lot). Also, perhaps you can use "aggressive mode" if things works well with you. And increase the minimum caching time if that's ok with your website as well.

3. Disabled all unused modules and blocks that you don't need. For example, I disabled the Login since user has a link to click it at the top anyways.

4. Another thing I did was optimize all my tables (I think that helps a lot as well)

Also, for the cron job, there is a section on how to enable cron job for Network Solution here -> http://drupal.org/cron/ (just search for the text network solution)
Hope this works for others as well :)

it works

UN Web Services commented 12 August 2011 at 21:02

thanks Amurobo - this post really helped me. I have a NS small host for experimenting with. They have a precanned drupal build but I wanted drupal commons. When first running the install I hit memory issues. After I put the settings above in my php.ini (located in cgi-bin), the install ran OK. Note : I did not install all the DC modules in the first install, I first installed core then added manually the others afterwards.

Speaking to point #2

mchrisneglia commented 31 March 2009 at 18:34

>> 2) PHP does not allow cron jobs, so cron.php will not run

You don't need cron, necessarily. Like others have said, what crontab is doing is simply running a script on a schedule. So you really just need to do the same with different tools in other environments to keep Drupal happy.

And there's a way to fix this issue if you are running in a windows server environment. Heaven help you. It's called 'AT', and yes it's stupid because it's made by Microsoft engineers who left the usability and robustness of cron out of the picture. If you are stuck with windows because of your job, I feel your pain. But here's the fix.

The folowing are contents of the file 'run_drupal_cron.bat'. Run it once then put it in a happy place (note that you could also use task scheduler in xp) :

REM Use this to reinstate the running of the cron.php script on a drupal install.
REM change the path to cron.php script your drupal installation / root directory
REM
REM You may have to enclose that path in quotes because windows filesystem
REM lets you be funny with spaces in names and file paths
REM
REM --mchrisneglia 3/13/09, for page1solutions, llc
REM

REM Midnight, 3:30am, 7am, 9am, Noon, 2pm, 4pm

at 23:59 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 3:30 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 7:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 9:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 12:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 14:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php
at 16:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\php\php-cgi.exe -q d:\www\drupal6\cron.php

I know a lot of hosting

benny_tan commented 10 April 2009 at 16:14

I know a lot of hosting providers run phpsuexec, Tigersites does, but Drupal works fine!

No Ubercart for Network Solutions

royerd commented 27 May 2010 at 03:07

Ubercart--the primary and best ecommerece solution--requires that you adhere to best practice and put your encrypted credit card info outside of the root directory. Networksolutions does not allow you to create directories above the root.

Everything I've experienced with networksolutions requires that you use their canned solutions. It's most certainly not a drupal friendly hosting service. And it's more expensive than most.

Dan

For those users stumbling in

charlie-s commented 16 June 2010 at 19:19

For those users stumbling in here looking for cheap hosting, I have had low-to-no downtime and decent performance with 1and1's basic package, which is something like $4 a month, on a dozen different drupal sites.

If you're getting real traffic -- such as many simultaneous views or a lot of modules activated and eating up memory, be prepared to go to a VPS somewhere (vps.net, hosting.com, wherever you are comfortable and the support is good) for 40-50 a month USD.

Just an update for those

charlie-s commented 11 July 2010 at 04:49

Just an update for those interested in NetSol hosting. They offer a VPS for $40 a month with 512 mb of ram, 20 gb of space, 500 gb bandwidth, 1 static ip, 1 included domain, etc. Although their support is good and fast, and the numbers I just mentioned are very good, the MySQL server still seems to be the bottleneck; drupal page loads are taking 5+ seconds. It's really unacceptable and I cannot recommend for Drupal.

Subscribing. My client is

scottm316 commented 25 August 2010 at 16:11

Subscribing. My client is using netsol until their renewal date when I will move them anywhere else. The drupal 6 site runs fine albeit painfully slow and except for the update module. I can't seem to get update info. Over the past year, the *odd* update came through, some modules will say 'unable to fetch' and some will say 'up to date'. Most of the time they say "Failed to fetch". And even though I haven't seen a successful result on the updates page in months, the "Last checked:" line on the updates page says "4 days, 10 hours ago"... and when I try to check manually it isn't updated. What the heck?

Scott
http://morrisonmultimedia.ca/
Edmonton, AB

Updates

Grounded commented 28 August 2010 at 21:55

I have the same issue with netsol. It is painfully slow. Anyway, I did notice that when you access your installation through a sub-domain that the updates process works fine. Its also faster for regular page loads. I don't know what this means but its interesting.

Going Poorly

rubenlouis commented 28 October 2010 at 19:09

I have had endless trouble with my Drupal install on Network Solutions. Just endless "Fatal Error: Allowed memory size..." errors. Their (usually solid) customer support is very hesitant to help in extending memory limits, and all of their suggestions to me in editing my php.ini file have failed.

What I don't get is why they offer a "one-click" installation of a cms that doesn't run well on their servers???

Well, what I'm not

royerd commented 28 October 2010 at 23:47

Well, what I'm not understanding is why people are choosing them in the first place when SITE5.com is half the cost and has much better features.

I'm currently running Drupal

mikefreije commented 29 October 2010 at 09:58

I'm currently running Drupal latest version on a Network Solutions shared host. Everything is working, i think some of you guys did a bad installation or something missing on your install , for me it is working fine and not error logs.

Mike

It works, yes, but you can't

royerd commented 31 October 2010 at 01:55

It works, yes, but you can't use Ubercart because you can't create a dir above public_html. So no ecommerce sites.

Perhaps not for these reasons, but Network Solutions DOES suck

escoles commented 20 February 2011 at 18:06

For Drupal or otherwise.

I have to work with a NetSol VPS for a client -- they went to NetSol against our recommendation because no one ever gets fired for choosing NetSol (though perhaps they should), and it's been a major pain in the ass ever since.

First, Plesk/Virtuozzo is a pain in the ass -- obtuse, obscure, etc.

Second, what ought to be simple changes sometimes end up having catastrophic consequences. For example, the IT guy on the client side added a new site to the VPS, which (for reasons that completely escape me) caused write permissions to revoke on the existing site, resulting in the inability for us to do anything about the 1800+ temp files that have accrued in the tmp directory (and which make the site essentially unusable).

Finally, they're just a morally bankrupt organization and ought to be driven out of business for that. (You know those official-looking "bills" you get by postal mail for domain registration services, which don't come from your registrar? That's them, hiding behind a subsidiary.)

... actually, it turned out

escoles commented 20 February 2011 at 21:09

... actually, it turned out that what happened is this: Something happened as a result of adding a new domain that caused a bunch of PHP values to get reset -- among them, safe_mode to 'on.' And now, it seems to be impossible to turn it off.

Brain-dead. But that's nothing new for NetSol.

Plus, they're provisioned with obsolete software

escoles commented 18 April 2011 at 13:53

Additionally, NetSol VPS are provisioned with c. 2004 versions of PHP and MySQL. You won't be able to run Drupal 7 on a NetSol VPS, as they are currently provisioned. They don't afford you the level of control you'd need to actually install more recent versions.

Network Solutions Experience

tarausa commented 19 April 2012 at 12:06

This post was from 2007 and some things have not changed. If you plan on using Drupal get another host. Network solutions still does not support Drupal. Weird?