PHP 4, PHP 5 or PHP 6

[Damien]

<h1>PHP 4, php 5 or php 6</h1>I've only just started using PHP 5... then they announce PHP 6? Who thinks they don't really have a game plan and are stretching them selfs too thin?

To me, it looks like it's heading into a Java route!

[ledeanio]

I develop in PHP 4, but with 5 in mind. Now it looks like my working practices could change.

Once I find a stable version of PHP 5 for Redhat 8, then I'll start using 5.

PHP 6? Not bad *nips to php.net*

LD

[eUKhost.com]

You should be aware of the fact that there is a community sitting somewhere in some part of the world planning to find security holes in all types of online applications.

Upgrades and patches are important to tackle this community. Upgrades are also important for better performance. We trust those who keep on introducing new versions of softwares and we love to implement any additional security feature released by the software vendors.

Those who don't come up with an update or security patch for their softwares cannot be trusted as software vendors.

Quote : Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute

[frosty]

Originally Posted by ledeanio

I develop in PHP 4, but with 5 in mind. Now it looks like my working practices could change.

Once I find a stable version of PHP 5 for Redhat 8, then I'll start using 5.

PHP 6? Not bad *nips to php.net*

LD

I fully agree with that.

To stay a year or so behind a new technology sounds like a sound practice to me. I also decided to stick to PHP 4 for a while.

Cheers,

frosty

[unplugged]

PHP5 is pretty mature now webhosts are only sticking with version 4 because a lot of things break under version 5. The trouble is PHP allowed (and still does in 5) people to be extremly sloppy in coding and when they turned round and said "Dont rely on things such as register globals etc" people carried on and now when version 6 comes out theres going to be a lot of crying web hosts cant stick around on version 4 for ever!

6 has been out in CVS for a while buit will be a while before it hits mainstream being an open source development project theres always teams of people building "The next major release" while smaller ones look at mopping up holes in the older ones.

if PHP.NET ever makes a mark (which I hope it will) it will encourage a lot of people to write more OO PHP code which will leave a lot of v4 users crying.

[eUKhost.com]

We have PHP 5.0.4 on our new servers and MySQL 5.0.24-standard. We've setup our new servers with new versions at the time of loading cpanel on the servers and thats the best way to keep customers happy on a new server as those who see any coding error with php 5 will modify their code rather than complaining.

Upgrading php and mysql version on old servers is not easy as there are many customers who get upset with the errors and they think that we messedup something on their website to bring those errors.

Customer service becomes easy when you have updated version of software on the server at the time of setup of server.

[unplugged]

Yeah I know but in general any serious script now is PHP5 ready things that break now tend to be custom written code. The amount of people who still pressure their hosts to enable register_globals (now disabled by default since PHP5) to save time recoding their insecure scripts are going to get a nasty shock when PHP6 comes out as there is no option to enable it.

Ditto register_long_globals etc but yes it is easier on new servers.

[Eidolon]

I think if eukhost.com are to upgrade existing servers/users to PHP 5 they're probably best emailing people giving them a months notice of the change, so that they've had plenty of time/warning to get their website sorted. It would also be the ideal time to switch register_globals off, as pepole could sort that out whilst ensuring they are PHP5 compatible.

To correct to 'register globals off' for pages that use URLs such as index.php?page=example all they need to do is add...

$page = $_GET['page'];

...towards the start and it works. That would probably fix the problem most users would experience, as for other problems personally I'd advice them that their coding is not properly coded (though lead balloon springs to mind).

Incidentally Wikimedia software no longer supports PHP 4 in its latest version, so I'd be keen to see the servers upgraded to PHP5. As for PHP 6 it's probably best not to use for quite a while as like all new things a lot of bugs will probably be found.

[unplugged]

PHP5 only started to become mainstream earlier this year its going to be a long while before PHP6 is production ready let alone used highly on the net.

I think another year maybe before we start seeing it becomes a big player.

[eUKhost.com]

Its much better to setup mod_security on the servers with php 4.4.x and let mod_security take care of the bugs with old version of php. Upgrading php on servers even after notification would make problems as last time few customers forced our technical support staff to fix php bugs with their websites.

To convince the customer that he / she has bug in php coding needs fix for the problem to prove. Even if we notify all webmasters to make necessary modifications in their code to make their scripts compatible with php5, they will ask us to provide them with another account where they can test their code with php5.

Conclusion would be that we fix the problem or else some customers will say "somethings wrong with the server"

[ledeanio]

Hi,

I am now using PHP5 at work and am using Oject Orientated techniques. My website is also ready to start using OO techniques as I am slowly using PHP to reduce the overhead of content management. I would say that a move to PHP5 would be a good one as it has now been out for a while - however, it would probs be a good idea to give people a lot of notice and maybe an email with a few pointers on how to ensure that the disruption would be kept to a minmum.

BTW: A well known web host who we use for our company upgraded their MySQL servers which resulted in a few of our web apps dying - so it couldn't be any worse than that.

[eUKhost.com]

MySQL upgrade cannot make any problems for your database if its done in a proper way. You should ensure that the upgrade process takes care of making changes to the databases as per its requirement and it takes care of fixing all problems.

We have upgraded mysql version couple of times but none of our customers complained as we give advance notification and the upgrade is done by our expert system admins.

Cpanel has simplified upgrades for mysql, apache, perl, php, Fantastico and many other inbuilt softwares and all you need to do is keep yourself updated with what new features have been implemented with new release of cpanel.

[unplugged]

Very little changes between MySQL but to say that "If its coded correctly" will not cause things to break is a very harsh statement I know of at least two instances where MySQL have changed the way something happens and caused valid queries to break.

a very Popular one in v5 was the way they handled LEFT JOINS.

Below is (arguably) a valid query and would work fine right the way up to I think it was 5.1x.

SELECT a.`*`, b.`*`
FROM `table1` a, `table2` b
LEFT JOIN `table3` c ON c.`col1` = a.`col1`
WHERE a.`col1` = b.`col1'

This had to be changed to

SELECT a.`*`, b.`*`
FROM `table2` b, `table1` a
LEFT JOIN `table3` c ON c.`col1` = a.`col1`
WHERE a.`col1` = b.`col1'

They look the same its just the table ordering there is a good reason but a good example of how a small change can cause such greif especially in old scripts. but yes normally MySQL upgrades are painless.

[eUKhost.com]

cPanel has got inbuilt feature which takes care of sorting this problems. When you upgrade MySQL using cpanel scripts then it goes in all databases and makes necessary alterations to ensure that the code remains functional after upgrade.

I dont have much knowledge of MySQL queries but all I know is that our billing system, forum, blog and all other applications have worked without errors even after all MySQL upgrades in last couple of years.

[realmadrid-bg]

Hi!

I'm using PHP 5. I don't know why () may be because the first book about PHP that I bought was about PHP 5

[DavidAllen]

I copied a website over from my Linux hosting to my Windows to test it out. My Linux hosting (with euk) has php 4.4.2 and mySQL 4.1.21 and the windows has php 5.16 and mySQL 5.0.27 so I was expecting a few problems - but hey... there were none, it all worked!!!! Clever me? No, probably not - I checked and found that registerGlobals is turned on with windows - is there a reason for this? I thought it was meant to be off by default with v5+. Not complaining - just curious

[eUKhost.com]

Our windows system admins turned it On as they had complaints from some customers. I am not sure how they did it.