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Enjoy!

1) Follow @WhereToHost on twitter: http://twitter.com/WhereToHost

2) Send a message @WhereToHost telling us who your favorite web host is and why.

We’ll look over the messages and select the most creative, that person will get a free domain – heck we may give more then one.

–The WTH Team!

JJ

• The hosts we are collecting data from will soon be announced

So I never actually did that, I just activated the host list page about a week back and left it at that. A few of the major hosts that were going to setup accounts for us fell though, unfortunate but we’ll find a way to grab the info anyhow even if it means shelling out the cash to grab an account.

• The host cloud will become active soon

I eventually figured that the cloud for the hosts might be a bit too redundant and decided to just drop the idea, at least for now.

• The application detail pages will go live

Still going to do, of course, but there is quite a bit of information I haven’t gotten around to getting into the system and I have higher priorities at the moment.

• A page explaining the beta for hosting companies will be put up

I should have done this already but haven’t with any luck I’ll get it up within a week or so.

• Some code cleanup for the template engine will be implemented (done!)

This was actually a rather large rewrite of the current template class that runs the system, stripped out a few unnecessary functions and added a few more while I was at it.

• A banner rotation system will be added for the promo spot

Better then just doing that I setup an openX install for the advertising server. I now get weekly reports of all ads that get displayed, click throughs, impressions all the basics and more in a rather easy to use system. Quite nice!

So beyond all that I’ve also integrated a list of all the php extensions we check for on a host, so if I’m missing something important let me know! You’ll find that over here on the PHP Extensions We Check page. Each of the links on that page lead to another with more detailed information about that particular extension in PHP.

Finally we’ve activated three hosting companies in the current beta system, two are paid hosts and one is a free host, they are: DreamHost, GoDaddy, and 000WebHost.com. If any more hosting companies are interested in getting themselves into the system let us know!

-JJ Galvez
Black Falcon Solutions
WhereToHost Webmaster

For anyone who is interested the following additions have been made very recently.

1. 25 applications are now in the system! We’re still adding requirements but we have the main details and requirements recorded.
2. Slight changes are being made to the check file being run on our beta hosts. Extra checks for version numbers have been added.
3. The application tag cloud now randomizes the location of each application name. (Still working the CSS out for the design of each.)
4. The news feed for the right hand column is now being pulled and displayed.
5. Forums have been added to the site BUT still needs to be properly setup. Actual forums need to be added and users are needed!

Changes to come soon…

1. The hosts we are collecting data from will soon be announced
2. The host cloud will become active soon
3. The application detail pages will go live
4. A page explaining the beta for hosting companies will be put up
5. Some code cleanup for the template engine will be implemented
6. A banner rotation system will be added for the promo spot

On the one hand we’ll be able to help people with these scripts toward the goal of finding a suitable host. On the other we’re promoting scripts which might just be relying on register globals and long arrays being enabled, that’s bad!

My personal belief is that, as webmasters, we must be responsible in selecting the scripts which run our sites and engines. We should not select a script that will not run properly in a modern environment, nor should we be buying or using scripts which developers have simply stopped keeping up to date with the latest in standards and compatibility.

I suppose that should answer my question… no PHP4 applications will be added to the system if they require any features such as register_globals or register_long_arrays to be “On”.

Sorry to everyone who this will be affecting!

So what we do is hook up with a bunch of web hosts, where they agree to install a very small set of files (currently only 3) that runs a check on their PHP environment. That is of course one of the problems with this little system, it’s currently only for web hosts running Linux and PHP. I’ll eventually expand this to Ruby, Python, Perl, and so on but for now I’m sticking with PHP, so if you’re looking for a host that can handle something we don’t check for automatically head over to the forums. If there is a PHP application that you think should be added to the system add a request for application to the system.

So keep an eye (or two) on this blog! There is a lot going on and we hope you’ll be about hearing it from us!

-The Team @ WhereToHost.net