PHP Hosting
Anchor offers support for PHP on all of our shared website hosting and dedicated servers. This includes support both under Linux & Windows.
Anchor can do more for you than just host your PHP applications. Our support engineers are available at any time to assist in configuration, setup and deployment.
Deployment details
PHP is installed as a CGI within each user account rather than the more common approach of using a module in the web server. This provides significant security benefits; an exploit in php code on another users account will not be able to affect your site as all code executes with only user level privileges.
Operating PHP as a module presents a significant security risk not only through exploits. Since the code is executed by the Apache user, the Apache system user must have access to every users code, any user with an account on a shared server can easily produce a script which is executed by the Apache user to provide them with access to other users databases and code.
The use of a CGI deployment allows the flexibility of operating a number of different PHP versions on the one server. Anchor offers a number of vendor supported versions. If your requirements are not met by these you are able to install your own custom compiled version within your account, without any assistance from Anchor.
PHP configuration can be customised on a per account basis via the use of individual php.ini files on all accounts.
Application versions supported
- PHP: 5.1.6, 5.0.4, 4.3.9, 4.3.2, 4.1.2
- MySQL: 5.0.22, 4.1.12
- PostgreSQL: 8.1.9, 7.4.8
- Apache: 2.2.3, 2.0.52
PHP applications
Anchor also provides support through installation of popular third party PHP based applications such as phpBB, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, Zend, Pear, Gallery, Wordpress, Joomla, MediaWiki, PHP-Nuke, vBulletin.
PHP modules and configuration options
The following modules are part of our default php web hosting offering:
bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, date, dbase, dom, exif, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, hash, iconv, imap, json, ldap, libxml, mbstring, mime_magic, mysql, mysqli, openssl, pcntl, pcre, PDO, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, pgsql, posix, pspell, Reflection, session, shmop, SimpleXML, sockets, SPL, standard, sysvmsg, tokenizer, wddx, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, zlib
Modules that are not currently installed/configured can most often be added upon request.
Environment details
PHP applications can be hosted in both shared and dedicated server environments.
Shared environments utilise:
- High end server grade hardware
- Rackmounted equipment
- Dual CPUs
- ECC Memory (4GB minimum)
- SCSI HDD in RAID1 configuration
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Redundant Hot Swap power supplies
- Fully redundant network infrastructure
- Continuous (24x7) server health monitoring
- Daily data backups
Account features
- Full shell access via SSH
- Command line database interfaces
- Detailed website statistics updated daily
- Choice of database engine PostgreSQL or MySQL
PHP hosting is available on all of our shared web hosting plans.
Application update policy & process
Anchor continuously monitors and applies updates to all vendor supported applications deployed on Anchor infrastructure to maintain stability and security.
We do not apply major updates to any application which can affect the stability of live/deployed client services.
Versions
Anchor is constantly deploying new shared web hosting servers equipped with the the latest stable application versions as supported by the operating system vendors. In this way if you need a major version upgrade it can most often be accommodated.
Scalability
As your PHP application becomes more demanding Anchor can walk you through the process of supplying more resources on the shared environment or perform a seamless migration to your own dedicated server.
More information about PHP website hosting at Anchor.
