I’ve been reviewing applications and scripts to add into the system and I’ve come up against a pretty difficult choice. There are a large volume of useful scripts that have been written some time ago using the PHP4 scripting language, which due to the way they are written won’t run on 90% (or more) of properly setup and secured PHP5 environments. Do I add them to the system?
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”.
We’re getting ready to start getting the beta hosts into the system and manually adding popular applications. Currently WordPress, zenPhoto, bbPress, Drupal, Joomla!, Knowledge Tree, Laconia, MediaWiki, WordPress MU, and zenCart are being added to the applications database. Hosts which have agreed to running the compatibility checking software will be announced soon.
The main idea behind WhereToHost is to write an application that is capable of checking the compatibility of any given webhost to the requirements (and optional features) needed for an application to function.
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.
It looks like DreamHost has had specials running since the first of the year! Unfortunately people who are barely hearing about this missed out on the 95%, 90%, and 80% off two year deals!
The currently running discount (as of 01/07/09) is 20% off two years of hosting by using the 227 promo code.
We’re just getting setup here at the news section of WhereToHost.net and the dust isn’t even close to getting settled! The main wiki for the site is still expanding at a decent pace and articles regarding some of the latest news in the web hosting industry are already getting written.
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!
We’re just getting setup here at the news section of WhereToHost.net and the dust isn’t even close to getting settled! The main 
