i want to know a couple of things

1. is php 5 stable on linux, because my web host tells me its not and i see a lot of module developers deciding to make modules for php5 only

2. my web host does not have a mod_rewrite installed on shared servers is there any way around this if i want to use short urls for my site.

From a quick search, it appears that the flavour of Linux has a bearing on whether PHP 5 is considered stable by hosting companies. Some interesting viewpoints here:

Why not PHP 5?

All the short-url solutions use mod_rewrite AFAIK. In my experience, it really isn't that important for SEO these days.

The rewrite commands must be written and stored in .htaccess files within your website. The account must be enabled first to allow the use of .htaccess files, which can be requested at any time and there are no extra charges for this IMO.

1. Yes, php5 is stable, been stable for quite some time. They're probably telling you it's not stable because they don't feel like upgrading numerous servers with php5.

2. Theres no real way around it without mod_rewrite...you could try just asking them to enable it for you. It should really be enabled by default though, do you have:



in your .htaccess?

I had a word with my web host again, they said they now have new servers for both windows and linux, so i can get a new account on these servers and they would upgrade their php to 5. but later they called back to say that php5 is not stable on linux but they can give it to me on windows as its stable for windows. So Should i take the windows hosting with php5 or its better to stick to php4 on linux. they have also assured that when php5 is stable for linux they will upgrade it themselves.

the hosting seems to be good as i havent had any problems with them for the last 6 months that i have been with them, the support also seems to be decent enough.

thanks for the help

uhm... k

I am running php5 and php4 on a nix box...

What OS do they have you on?

Ask for CentOS4 or something current... if they have you on Fedora, you should probably get a new host considering that official support for the project ended months ago, and since then countless exploits and vulnerabilities have been reported.

Webhosts will lie through their teeth to not have to do anything.

Heres another good one.

"cPanel/WHM 11 is not compatible with Apache 2..." - Sure tell that to cPanel

LMAO, they need to get on the ball, because PHP4 is dead. and running old versions of your panels is a huge security risk. Companies will try and tell you that cpanel will not run on Apache 2... Sublime, it took us what... 3 hours to do the whole upgrade?

By now you should without a doubt be running an Apache2/PHP4-5/SQL 5 cfg. Considering that php5 is current and 6 is on the way....

***Edit***
You could very easily do this stuff yourself. If you update to the WHM 11.11.0 cPanel 11.12.0-C17278 releases you can use easyapache3 to update to apache2 php5-4 modrewrite etc.

Quite simple once you get past the idea that its hard.

BOL

As the other guy stated, just about all short url related scripts use mod-rewrite. As for PHP5, I think it's still a little unstable. just my 2 cents