PHP4 and PHP5 Processing

Last modified: Tuesday, January 08, 2008

At the end of 2007, the PHP development team announced that support for PHP 4 had officially ceased, although critical security fixes could continue to be made available on a case-by-case basis until August, 2008.

To provide backward compatibility for legacy applications dependent on PHP4, while still satisfying web developers requiring access to the newer features of PHP5, GCom Internet has opted to provide our Australian and USA hosting clients with concurrent processing of both PHP4 and PHP5, but only for so long as we consider PHP4 to not represent any threat to the security or performance of our clients' sites or our servers.

PHP Processing Prior to September, 2008

• PHP4 is the default handler for all .php and .php4 file types.
• PHP5 is the default handler for all .php5 file types.

PHP Processing From and After September, 2008

• PHP5 is the default handler for all .php and .php5 type files.
• PHP4 is the default handler for all .php4 file types.

Overriding the Default PHP Handler

Apart from specifically naming a PHP file with a .php4 or .php5 file extension, developers can also force their standard .php files to be processed by a particular handler via a single line entry within their .htaccess file.

Prior to September, 2008 only, to force PHP5 processing of all .php file types, add the following line to your .htacess file...

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

From and after September, 2008 only, to force PHP4 processing of all .php file types, add the following line to your .htacess file...

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php

Proactive Testing for PHP5 Compatibility

As explained above, GCom Internet will provide legacy PHP4 support only for so long as we consider it to be a safe option. Please expect to see PHP4 processing dropped from our Australian and USA servers some time after September, 2008.

Accordingly, it is essential that all clients, as a matter of urgency, test their existing PHP applications for compatibility with PHP5, and make whatever coding corrections are required to achieve full compliance.