Blacknight in hosting PHP5 shocker

[CrimsonGhost]

Well I got a mail from Blackknight over the weekend. Apparently they're pleased to announce they now support PHP5.
Over 30 months after PHP 5.0.0 got it's final release.
2 and a half years. Missed to boat guys. I went, and I'm sure others probably did too, with hosting in the US which provided PHP5 long ago, although it is great new that it is now available.

But it raises the question, how slow/fast on the uptake are people out there. I know in the past, when I went looking, most places (even 18 months after PHP5 went production) over here wouldn't provide hosting with it. Why is this? Given that it was all places there presumably is some very valid reason for it, anyone able to shed light on it?

forbairt

I'd have to say ... its partly due to security ?

Usually in the first number of months .. 6 months to a year .. a large number of exploits are found in new software ? ... I'll guess these could bring down servers ..

Also php 5 ended up breaking a LOT of OS software that was just meant to run out of the box.

edit: Vista launched the other day ... I'll assume you're a windows user ? ... have you gone out and upgraded ?

seamus

A lot of it would have been due to compatibility issues.

Popular software like phpBB, VBulletin and OsCommerce didn't have PHP5 support for quite some time.

You also have the issue that upgrading the version of php could break customers' sites literally overnight.
Look at it this way:-

1. Customer gets web developer in to develop site. Site works perfectly in PHP 4.0
2. Customer is happy with site, web developer is signed off.
3. Two years later, web host informs customer that they're upgrading to PHP 5.0. Customer ignores email, hasn't a clue what PHP is.
4. Customer opens up their website one morning two weeks later, and there are errors everywhere.
5. Customers spends hours/days screaming down phone at the host and trying to get their site fixed.
6. Customer has to spend 1000's to get the developer back to fix their site
7. Customer blames web host for "suddenly" changing their website, and moves to a different host.

Have blacknight gone and upgraded all of their packages to PHP 5.0, or is it only new signups/servers that they're offering this on?

While it's nice for developers to have the latest engines available to them, it may not be feasible for web hosts to provide the software.

[CrimsonGhost]

The security issue would make sense.

The other software, oscommerce etc I'm a bit dubious about. Certainly there is no way I'd just put PHP5 on existing boxen which were running PHP4 for existing customers, but rather on new boxes make it available as an option.

phil

Most most hosting companies in Ireland are not in control of what software they can offer. Secondly, whatever they offer they have to support. Thirdly, noone in their right mind runs PHP x.0 ... and that's the same for most software.

I can imagine that the reason this is delayed in most instances is because most of the major control panels that hosting companies use didn't support PHP 5.x until recently enough.

Different hosting companies have different priorities on everything, but the most reasonable is to assume that most want a stable production environment for their customers. If you want technology X right away, then you need to look for a host that provides bleeding edge technology quickly.

Plenty of the control panels don't allow you to run PHP 4.x and 5.x in conjunction with each other on the same server, so you're limited immediately in what you can offer people when they sign up.

Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it presents more difficulties than maybe you're assuming and there's a LOT more to think about than install, click and happy PHP 5 customers.

Phil.

mneylon

Since we're the subject of the thread .....


Couple of things:

We've been offering PHP5 for the last few months on Windows.

We're offering it to all new signups on Linux

We didn't want to offer it earlier until we were confident that 3rd party software, such as OSCommerce etc., worked with php5.

Seamus more or less summed up the reality

Michele

miju

if anything it's a testament to blacknights qaulity & secrutiy control issues are kept to a minimum (this coming from a previously very disgruntled customer of blacknight btw)

mick.fr

phil wrote:

Most most hosting companies in Ireland are not in control of what software they can offer.

Hu ? What do you mean ? Is there a special Irish law that I am not aware of ?

mneylon

mick.fr wrote:

Hu ? What do you mean ? Is there a special Irish law that I am not aware of ?

Most of us use control panels such as h-sphere, cpanel, directadmin etc.,

If the control panel vendor doesn't support the software it makes it very awkward for us to offer it.

mick.fr

blacknight wrote:

Most of us use control panels such as h-sphere, cpanel, directadmin etc.,

If the control panel vendor doesn't support the software it makes it very awkward for us to offer it.

Fair enough but I do not see the point with Ireland ?
Most of those panel companies will provide support by email anyway, whatever location you are.
Anyway most of the ISP will focus on one particular panel and will fully support it.
cPanel is really common for Linux while Plex is for Windows hosting.

mneylon

mick.fr wrote:

Fair enough but I do not see the point with Ireland ?

It's irrelevant

mick.fr wrote:

Most of those panel companies will provide support by email anyway, whatever location you are.
Anyway most of the ISP will focus on one particular panel and will fully support it.
cPanel is really common for Linux while Plex is for Windows hosting.

Plesk comes in Windows and Linux flavours, but I think you're missing the point entirely anyway.

As a hosting provider we cannot simply enable the latest bleeding edge technology (or whatever) without taking into consideration the side-effects.

If the control panel vendor doesn't support the technology you want to offer then you are facing a technical support nightmare.

As you mention Cpanel I'll give you a clear example.

Cpanel introduced support for Tomcat a couple of years ago. Unfortunately it wasn't as tested as it should have been, so it would break sites every second day.

Moral of the story - you're better off waiting ....

Of course it's a different matter if you are running a dedicated server

mick.fr

Hu ?

Well Michele, somebody said Irish ISPs have their hands tied up with software they can actually implement/use.
I just pointed out I do not see the point with Irish ISP, as all ISPs have the same issues. So what the guy said was irrelevant, not what I said.

What is irrelevant is to implement applications that just came out, especially when they have been developed by a community without any proper quality/security tests, but this has been pointed out and well explained several times in this thread and I agree with this there is no problem.
I did not even argued with the points made here, I just pointed out the "Irish software issue"...

I never said you should implement the latest products ?
So there is no point of telling me I am missing the all point...

Liam Byrne

All the above posts refuting the OP are spot-on. The security/bugs, the customer scenario, and the third-party software (or even the customer's own site itself) listed above are spot-on.

We uploaded a perfect PHP 4.4 site to a PHP 5.0 test server and it refused point blank to work....if that had happened in real life who'd have paid for the upgrading ?

Re Mick's post, in particular the "especially when they have been developed by a community without any proper quality/security tests" bit.....that's completely unfair, IMHO......quite a lot of the open-source stuff is better than Microsoft's, particularly when it comes to security (e.g. Firefox) and even allowing for the fact that the actual figures are skewed based on the larger potential for a successful hacker aiming at a MS platform, there's still no basis for saying that the "community without any proper quality/security tests" is worse than MS.

And as for backward-compatibility, think of the days when any poor unfortunate who upgraded to MS-DOS 6.2 or 6.22 found their backups wouldn't restore, or how anyone who uses new computers pre-loaded with MS-Office automatically screws up access to document files for anyone using the old version, thereby forcing people to upgrade.

There are pros and cons for both software camps, but implying dismissively that the community is less thorough or thoughtful toward their users is out of line.

And BlackKnight (and any other hosts worth their salt) are dead right to be slow to roll out upgrades for all of the reasons listed above.

mneylon

mick.fr wrote:

Hu ?

Well Michele, somebody said Irish ISPs have their hands tied up with software they can actually implement/use.
I just pointed out I do not see the point with Irish ISP, as all ISPs have the same issues. So what the guy said was irrelevant, not what I said.

No. What he said was fine, as he's an employee of an Irish hosting company. You just focussed on the "Irish" element of what he said.

mick.fr wrote:

I did not even argued with the points made here, I just pointed out the "Irish software issue"...

What "Irish software issue"?

Please re-read what he posted. If you want to replace or delete the word "Ireland" from the post with any other country it would still be a valid statement.

mick.fr wrote:

I never said you should implement the latest products ?
So there is no point of telling me I am missing the all point...

You missed the point completely as you understood it as being an "Irish" "issue"

jmcc

Bleeding edge is the bleeding edge for a few reasons - one of them is that bleedin' eejits tend to use it expecting it to be stable, get cut to pieces and then blame the hoster for providing it.

Stability matters with web applications and it is often customers on shared hosting that want bleeding edge software and are not prepared to pay for their own dedicated server. Thus most hosters will stay with what is secure and keeps the majority of applications running. That's generally the release before the bleeding edge one.

What irritates me is all this waffle about hosting in the US and how it is better and cheaper. Most of the wafflers don't realise that they are customers of some n-th level reseller of a reseller that might be run by some schoolkid out of his or her bedroom. In such a situation, these n-th level resellers have no control over the security or the software and most of them do not have enough expertise as system administrators to deal with problems. If you want to see what I mean - just try using a .ie domain with one of them. Of the problems with .ie domains on non Irish hosters, 99% of them are due to the "hosters" being simply unable to set up the domain because it is not a generic .com or .net.

Regards...jmcc

GoneShootin

jmcc wrote:

Most of the wafflers don't realise that they are customers of some n-th level reseller of a reseller that might be run by some schoolkid out of his or her bedroom.

Oh crap, he's onto me!

mick.fr

jmcc wrote:

What irritates me is all this waffle about hosting in the US and how it is better and cheaper. Most of the wafflers don't realise that they are customers of some n-th level reseller of a reseller that might be run by some schoolkid out of his or her bedroom. In such a situation, these n-th level resellers have no control over the security or the software and most of them do not have enough expertise as system administrators to deal with problems. If you want to see what I mean - just try using a .ie domain with one of them. Of the problems with .ie domains on non Irish hosters, 99% of them are due to the "hosters" being simply unable to set up the domain because it is not a generic .com or .net.

Regards...jmcc

Do not generalize.
The US ISP where already hosting websites while Irish people (Most of the European anyway) did not even have any dial-up internet connections available in the country.
It is correct that anybody can actually provide hosting through reseller programs and be a simple 16 years old kid, but if people are stupid enough to trust a entity that does not have a telephone number, a proper office, I am not gonna cry for them.

jmcc

mick.fr wrote:

Do not generalize.

It is easy to generalise with the kind of internet data that I have here - I've got most of the internet in a few databases. :

The US ISP where already hosting websites while Irish people (Most of the European anyway) did not even have any dial-up internet connections available in the country.

It might surprise you to know that some people around here remember the internet before the web and have the dialup phonebills to prove it. (Think spending 15000 Euros in a year on phonebills and you will have some idea.) Many US ISPs emerged from the BBSes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ISPs added hosting as an option and it was very expensive. Hosting as a commodity didn't really begin to happen until circa 1995 and then hosting moved beyond the ISPs to companies that were dedicated to selling hosting only (Hosting Service Providers or HSPs). This pattern was delayed in Ireland and in much of Europe. The UK and Germany were far ahead of the curve and as a result of this have far larger internet footprints than say Ireland or France. Ireland's slow growth in this was due to the economic traitors in Telecom Eireann/Eircom management and their cronies in the government delaying broadband and keeping Ireland in the technological Dark Ages.

It is correct that anybody can actually provide hosting through reseller programs and be a simple 16 years old kid, but if people are stupid enough to trust a entity that does not have a telephone number, a proper office, I am not gonna cry for them.

In an early market, n-th level resellers are the norm. Again in that early market, most of a country's websites are hosted outside that country's IP space on US and UK HSPs (often n-th level resellers) because the local ISPs charge too much and second generation HSPs have not appeared yet.

When a country's web market begins to mature, the second generation HSPs like Blacknight/Hosting365/Novara/Irishdomains begin to appear and gradually they take most of the hosting market away from the ISPs. During that phase of the market, there is still a small segment of the market hosted outside the country's IP space often on these n-th level resellers.

As the market moves to its mature phase, the n-th level resellers will often move back to the country's super HSPs. For Ireland, these would be H365, Novara, Blacknight, Irishdomains. But what these n-th level resellers really represent, (this is based on actual research of reverse mapping every website in com/net/org/biz/info/ie/eu back to the IP), are small webdevelopers using a reseller package to host the sites they develop. Perhaps they are pseudo-hosters as they are not really in the business of primarily selling hosting services.

Regards...jmcc

mick.fr

That's interesting and I am glad the ISP and web hosting companies finally reached some maturity all over Europe.

Like for example in France, almost anybody (Geo location) can have a DSL line with a 16MB down speed for about 20 euro a months, even less nowadays. No cap.

It took a while in France, really started in 2001-2002 because of France Telecom, like Eircom here I guess according to what you are saying.
I remember in 2000 I was paying like 150 euro a month to Wanadoo for a 512KB DSL crappy connection.

Anyway sure what you are saying about the n-th level is true in the US, but simply because ISP has become so cheap, popular and extremely numerous, that anybody can afford it.
But still I think we are not yet arrived at this stage in Europe.

I remember to have read somewhere the proportion of hosted websites (all of them) was about 65% being hosted in the US. That's pretty huge. Maybe this figure has changed since...

Personally I still find some huge differences between US and EURO hosting companies. To me it looks like (Well it is a fact, simply compare the packages) the EURO hosters do not offer as many features as the US ones will do, plus the price is higher in Europe (Plus thanks to the Euro, we can buy cheap $$$).

For me the US ones are much more flexible (As usual) compared to the EURO ones.

Now when the choice comes to choose a US hoster, I always make sure they have a real phone number, the company has a real history, then I am pretty sure those guys are not 16 years old students that just have a reseller account.

I have been hosting websites since 1997 and still I have not found the quality of service in Europe I have always had in the US (Was using www.xo.com many eyars ago...)

One example : Is there any Irish hosting company doing 24/24 live support ? (Talking about the small hosters, not BT or Eircom)

steve-hosting36

I assume you mean 24/7 and yes, we, among others, do.

democrates

I have to come out in support of the Irish hosting providers, in particular Blacknight and Hosting365.

There are some overpriced chancers here too it's true, and they seem to stay in business by snaring people into signing up by using the rhetoric of fear - for God's sake grab your domain name immediately before someone else gets it. People who fall for this ploy also often have inertia and don't move to a better host.

I had US hosting a few years back and most of the bells and whistles were of no real use. Guestbook ooh! Hit-counter eeh! Frontpage Extensions Aah! Price was the initial determinant but despite advertising claims the email support lags weren't worth the saving.

There's nothing you can't do here in Ireland in terms of end user functionality, and unlike the US provider I was with (who even offered a 'datacentre' plan to those 16 y.o.'s) at least you get problems sorted here fast on a cheap if not free support call.

Back to the op point. Bleeding edge costs more to provide, I don't need it because I can design any system I need on the earlier php/mysql 'golden' releases, and I don't want to subsidise other customers who incur extra costs. Maybe there's a case for latest everything plans at a price reflecting the extra costs?

seamus

democrates wrote:

There are some overpriced chancers here too it's true, and they seem to stay in business by snaring people into signing up by using the rhetoric of fear - for God's sake grab your domain name immediately before someone else gets it. People who fall for this ploy also often have inertia and don't move to a better host.

I'm not sure. It's definitely ignorance that causes people to not shop around, but not of the fear kind IMO. I've met plenty of "developers" who charge people ridiculous amounts for piggybacking on their hosting accounts and maintenance of what are already shoddily written and very poor websites. I'm not going to post links of such sites, as I have done work with these people in the past, and would still like to maintain business relationships .

Rest assured, the vast majority of small companies getting websites set up have very little idea what "hosting" is, let alone the process to getting hosted, or the hosts available to them. They get the "friend of a friend"* to build them a website and accept all the costs presented to them because they don't know what else to do.

Pure example, I pay €350 a year on my hosting account. If I wished, I could easily charge a small business €80 per year to have their site hosted on my account. They wouldn't know any better. I only need to host four sites to make my money back. Any after that are pure profit. Yet any of the big Irish hosts would be able to give them adequate hosting for half that, and they'd have their own control panel, etc etc. But some people may consider it reasonable to charge them for the "benefit" of not having to deal with a control panel.


* I'm not knocking this method of business, it has served me well so far

mick.fr

Isn't the same story we hear on the radio, TV, boxes on shops :

"Irish made", "Buy Irish, it is good for you", "Irish owned", "100% Irish" etc...

I mean yeah guys for sure you defend your local business and I respect that but you can not simply say "Irish hosting is better because it is Irish". I am sorry but this is exactly what you are saying here.

For me Irish companies are still far from the service I have in the US, in term of features they propose and in term of price because I have some specific and unusual needs.

So I am happy with them, but like I said already in a previous post general and basic hosting offers are fine in Ireland. But when you need more, this is where the Irish hosting companies will charge you a lot, too much.

mneylon

mick.fr wrote:

Isn't the same story we hear on the radio, TV, boxes on shops :

"Irish made", "Buy Irish, it is good for you", "Irish owned", "100% Irish" etc..

Yes. And what's the problem with that? If people don't buy from the local providers (and I mean that in the broadest sense) then the local economies would collapse

mick.fr wrote:

I mean yeah guys for sure you defend your local business and I respect that but you can not simply say "Irish hosting is better because it is Irish". I am sorry but this is exactly what you are saying here.

I don't think anybody has said that.

mick.fr wrote:

For me Irish companies are still far from the service I have in the US

You keep saying that without actually quantifying it

mick.fr wrote:

So I am happy with them, but like I said already in a previous post general and basic hosting offers are fine in Ireland. But when you need more, this is where the Irish hosting companies will charge you a lot, too much.

So is it service or price?

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

Either you think Irish companies can't provide the service or you think that they charge more than the Americans.

Which is it?

jmcc

mick.fr wrote:

Isn't the same story we hear on the radio, TV, boxes on shops :

"Irish made", "Buy Irish, it is good for you", "Irish owned", "100% Irish" etc...

I mean yeah guys for sure you defend your local business and I respect that but you can not simply say "Irish hosting is better because it is Irish". I am sorry but this is exactly what you are saying here.

No. The difference is that hosting is a service rather than a product. Therefore the proximity of the hosting company, and the fact that they are in the same time zone is critical. If something goes wrong the fact that you can contact someone immediately is very important. With a hoster in the US, you have at least a five hour differential between the client and the hoster.

There is also a far more important point that you have overlooked: Geo Location. Most traffic to websites is delivered by search engines. Having a site on Irish IP space means that it appears higher up in the Irish searches on Google and other search engines. Now that may not be important for you but for many Irish commercial sites it is critical. The same rule would apply to France, Germany or any other country outside the US. If a site is an Irish .com and it is on US IP space, then it is an immediate disadvantage if it is trying to sell into Ireland. This is why the ccTLD (.ie etc) is used by Google et al to compensate for IP based geolocation.

Regards...jmcc

Ph3n0m

For me Irish companies are still far from the service I have in the US

I for one would love to know how you believe the service in the US is far superior to the any in Ireland

In fact what kind of service are you talking about - even as a comparisson

forbairt

I've hosting with a US Hosting company and I've hosting with an Irish hosting company ...

The US hosting company I use for mock ups messing about and so on ...
They offer me a LOT ... and its a great service ... BUT ... and its a pretty big BUT ... their support while its great is in a different time zone ... they tend to pack a lot more people onto their servers ... Their downtime for repairs and so on seems to cross over with our up time (not so much downtime in recent months)

Hence for paying customers sites I host them with an irish provider.

As for bleeding edge technologies .... if I really want bleeding edge technologies I'll run them myself and have my own server somewhere and yes I could run bleeding edge technologies with one of the irish hosting companies if I so wish.