Php Updates

[TCH-Blog]

TotalChoice Hosting currently supports three separate PHP versions across all of its shared/reseller servers. The majority of these servers are running PHP 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 with 5.3 being the default, with a small percentage running on PHP 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5. Now that PHP 5.4 is just as widely supported as PHP 5.3 and with PHP 5.5 not far behind it, we are going to start rolling out some changes. These changes are required to improve the security and maintain the high performance our of servers and customer websites.

What does this mean for you as a web hosting customer at TotalChoice Hosting?

• We will be removing support for PHP 5.2 as of September 15, 2014, for security reasons. The end of life for PHP 5.2 occurred nearly 4 years ago and we encourage customers using it to update their scripts to meet at least PHP 5.3 standards.
• We intend to fully support and offer PHP 5.3 to customers through January 2015 at a minimum, at which point we will review it again, as it will only receive security updates through July 2014. That means customers will have at least 3 PHP versions at their disposal for the next 6 months, PHP 5.3.x, PHP 5.4.x and PHP 5.5.x.
• We will be rolling out PHP 5.4 as the default PHP handler from July 15 – Sept 15, as it is quickly becoming the new standard expected by web applications and customers alike.
• When the default PHP handler is changed from 5.3 to 5.4, all customers that don’t currently have a special htaccess entry, will be on PHP 5.4. We understand that this can cause issues for some customers, so we will be rolling out a new feature to your cPanel account to assist you. If you decide you don’t want PHP 5.4, you can easily change to the other PHP versions with our new PHP Select option.
• As support for FrontPage was dropped by Microsoft in 2006 and is no longer supported by cPanel, we will finally be discontinuing FrontPage Support on our shared servers. We have maintained this limited service as a custom module for a while now, but it is not compatible with the newer versions of Apache (http server). We recommend customers still using FrontPage to publish content with a different method, such as FTP or WebDAV.

We understand that any change can bring unintended consequences and may present an inconvenience to our family of clients, however keeping servers and software up to date with current software versions is something that must be done. As always, we thank you for choosing TotalChoice and we will be posting updates as we proceed with the roll out.

 

View the full article

[TCH-Dick]

UPDATE: Roll out schedule

 

Resellers:
A-F :: July 20
G-O :: July 21
P-Z :: July 22
Shared:
A-C :: July 23
D-G :: July 24
H-K :: July 25
L-P :: July 26
Q-T :: July 27
U-Z :: July 28

 

We will be starting with our reseller servers then moving on to shared. Should any issues arise during a server update, we will update the appropriate server issues forum. If you are unsure what server you are hosted on, you can locate the name using the following method:

• Login to your cPanel.
• Under the Stats section on the left, click on expand stats
• Scroll down till your see the Server Name field (for Paper Lantern theme, click on Server Information)