Php5 Is Great But No Web Host Support

Just a general comment. I would love to develop with the new features of php5 but feel I cannot do so because 90% or more of the shared web hosts in the world still run older versions of php even though version 5 has been out for over a year now.I think that php.net and Zend are hampering the switch to php 5 by continuing to offer a highly visible option of downloading php 4 (on the same page as php 5) and offering newer versions of php 4. The attitude of web hosts is, if there is little demand for php 5, why upgrade? The attitude of developers is, why develop in php 5 if nobody can run it. A classic catch 22 situation.

mm well i couldnt install it on my computer and i tried it for sometimes, i erased everything in my computer related to php or config files also i erased some registry entries, that didnt work after that i had o erase my computer and then install again php5 but still didnt work next i decided to pray to god but it still wasnt recognized by my pc i changed to buddist religion and pray to budda but it still didtn work after many unfortunate chices i asked my mother if she could help me but she didnt know, how sad i never could have php5 up and running propperly so it was one day i saw this xampp a package that containes php, mysql installations and much more that i could have php5 running properly but i didnt see the difference, that could be my reason why i still use php4.Perhaps if php.org provide us with a page that is using php5 and demonstartes it all new features people could realize which is better (not only for having another number in the version means "great") or do you know or have any sample pages that are actually using php5 and some of its new features?

althrought the new feature of php5 is amazing, but, if exists php installations are all upgrade to php5 that is not confirmed can run older application that are written with php4, the internal struture of it have some different than version 4. so, this might be the reasion why not upgrade.

PHP 3 is fine for me. I can run basically everything I need. phpmychat.php3 Too easy.

I agree...PHP5 is very nice. I like a lot of the new features. I am aware of a few paid hosts who do support it, but those are far and few between...not many free hosts are supporting it unfortunately......Go PHP5!!

what so good about php 5? I noticed that recently, simple forum machine came out with a patch to make their forum client compatible iwth php 5.

There's a good reason people don't want to upgrade. Have you ever tried to install something on a Linux or UNIX machine (what most servers are)? There's a good bash quote about installing Linux, and installing programs on it is about as hard. Try looking at phpinfo() sometime, most of that has to be specified at install (typed in by hand, no InstallShield).

The reason PHP4 is still used :

- Backwards Incompatibility. What's the bet that if, say, Xisto switched to PHP5 tomorrow, and broke lots of peoples scripts, there would be a massive disturbance in the Force?

- It Works. PHP5 is uncharted territory : PHP4.x.x is known good. Unless you need the new stuff (like the vastly improved object oriented features) you don't need PHP5.

There's a good reason people don't want to upgrade. Have you ever tried to install something on a Linux or UNIX machine (what most servers are)? There's a good bash quote about installing Linux, and installing programs on it is about as hard. Try looking at phpinfo() sometime, most of that has to be specified at install (typed in by hand, no InstallShield).

oh yeah, if you used a decent linux distro (Debian based) usually you can just apt-get a piece of software and everything is done for you. The only trouble is that some things aren't in the repositories (like MySQL 5). The other problem is that if you have special needs (like you want to have the Sablotron engine for XML stuff) you need to rol-your-own and compile from source :[