A Somewhat Difficult Choice

January 18th, 2009

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”.

Sorry to everyone who this will be affecting!

Categories: WhereToHost News

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Just a quick update…

January 18th, 2009

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.

Categories: WhereToHost News

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We’re still working here!

January 18th, 2009

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.

Categories: WhereToHost News

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zenPhoto and DreamHost

January 15th, 2009

DreamHost and zenPhoto Review

When looking over DreamHost and their compatibility with zenPhoto I found that they have an “Easy One Click” install available. This means two things:

  1. It extremely simple to go from nothing to installed in no time flat.
  2. DreamHost and zenPhoto are extremely compatible.

In fact I put together a quick video of the installation process. Enjoy!

Signup For DreamHost! – Get $50 Off With “WTH” Promo Code

Features of zenPhoto – from the zenPhoto website.

  • Internationalization/localization
  • Multi-lingual titles and descriptions
  • Plugin system
  • Slideshow
  • Automatically generated thumbnails, custom crops possible!, and sized-down images
  • Upload via FTP or via the admin interface
  • Move/copy/rename images and albums without loosing any data
  • Upload images, albums (folders) or even zip-archives
  • Comments on images and albums with powerful spam filters
  • AJAX-powered edit-while-you-browse
  • Sub albums; interface for moving/renaming images and albums.
  • Video support for Flash Video (.flv), MPEG4 (.mp4), Quicktime (.mov) and 3GP (.3gp)
  • Audio support for MP3 and MP4
  • Password protection for gallery and albums
  • EXIF and IPTC support
  • Watermarks for images
  • Powerful search with boolean expressions
  • Tags: Categorize you images with tags
  • Image and album rating
  • Dynamic albums: Generate albums from searches!
  • Highly customizable theme engine
  • rss for gallery, albums and comments
  • Multiple administrative users with varying rights
  • Cruft free, search engine friendly URLs with mod_rewrite

Categories: DreamHost, Reviews

Tags: 1 Comment

DreamHost, New Year’s Discounts

January 7th, 2009

DreamHost

DreamHost

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.

http://www.dreamhost.com/

Categories: Deals and Discounts, Hosting Providers, Main Site

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Your Daily Dose of Industry News

January 6th, 2009

http_boardWe’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!

-The Team @ WhereToHost.net

Categories: Main Site, Site News

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