PHP4 & PHP3

[Byron]

Hi,

I asked my hosting company for the reason why my server run on PHP3 and I asked when will the server be upgraded to ver 4.
This is the reason that was given to me.

"We can't upgrade to php4 on the virtual servers as we have other client who still using php3."

He will charge me for a migration fee to a server with PHP4.

Is this true that if he upgrade the server to PHP4, those users on the server using PHP3 will have problems? Isn't PHP backward compatible?

Thank you.
Byron

[Stallion]

For the most part, it is. There are a few rare instances where you'll encounter a problem, but those are _really_ rare cases.

Perhaps he means the .php3 file extension? You could drop him an email saying that he can set Apache to parse .php3 files with the PHP4 interepreter.

[Byron]

Is it advisable to stay on the PHP3 server or it's better for me to migrate my site to a PHP4 server?

is PHP4 better for hosting a vbulletin?

Thank you

[Byron]

any suggestions?

[Chris Schreiber]

vBulletin will work with either version of PHP, however it will run must better and faster with PHP 4.

-Chris

[JimF]

My hosting provider said the same exact thing to me. All of the existing servers are staying on PHP3 for a while, but all the newer servers coming online have PHP4.

The problem with a virtual host is that there are possibly hundreds of other sites on your server. What if one of those sites has one function somewhere in one of their REALLY important pages that isn't supported in PHP4 - their whole site gets messed up. Often it is hard to find exactly what the problem is.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think my host is currently working on something that would transition the servers into PHP4 while still making PHP3 available.

For reference, I use PHP3 on my forums and I haven't noticed any problems. I've run a copy of my forums on a machine with PHP4, and there was little difference, but we also have to take into consideration that the machine with PHP4 is about 5 feet from my desk ;).

Heck, give it a shot for yourself:
My Forums Running PHP3 (http://forums.bronx-bombers.com/)
My test forums running PHP 4 (http://www.advancedhorizons.com/forums/)

I just did the dump about an hour ago, so they should be almost identical in terms of content.

-jim

[Edited by JimF on 11-16-2000 at 01:04 PM]