Modwest - Advanced PHP 5 Web Hosting

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Discover why Modwest^® web hosting has become the choice for PHP developers all around the globe. Sign up for any Shared Hosting plan today and enjoy these uniquely powerful benefits:

PHP Configurator
Context Consistency
PHP5 and PHP4
Your own php.ini
Expert PHP Support
Modwest OnSite
MySQL Databases, phpMyAdmin
Shell Access via SSH

"I've never experienced a hosting company like Modwest. They are inexpensive and have great knowledge in PHP with the best customer service. I can rely on you 100%."

Randy Z.
Babylon, NY

"After speaking to a few guys at a web design meetup last night, I can't believe how lucky I am to have found Modwest. No one could believe that you would let me tweak my php.ini settings, etc. Honestly, you guys are so good ... I recommend you all the time."

N. Wright
Littleton, CO

"I haven't found another PHP/MySQL hosting company that offers so many extensions, an awesome control panel and great customer service."

M. Solis
Laie, HI

"Modwest has many features that 95% of other web hosts only have for their dedicated servers!"

Simon J.
Katrineholm, Sweden

A Different Hosting Experience

PHP has quickly become the most popular server-side scripting language worldwide, so we've built our system to be the ultimate development environment for talented PHP developers like you. You will experience these benefits with our unique PHP hosting environment:

Control - Direct access to your own php.ini file and configurator.
Freedom - Choose which version of PHP to run, which extensions are installed, and even install your own commercially licensed or custom-coded extensions.
Greater Security - All PHP code executes within the boundaries of each account, not in a server-wide context that could compromise others' data.

The Modwest PHP Configurator

As a PHP developer, you need the ability to alter and adjust the behavior of PHP inside your hosting account. Whether you need to change security-related settings such as allow_url_fopen or register_globals, or enable XML/XSLT functionality for your site, Modwest offers a level of flexibility in all our shared hosting accounts that is generally found only on dedicated servers.

You will have two ways to take advantage of this unique level of flexibility. If you prefer, you can edit your very own /etc/php.ini directly with your favorite command-line editor such as vi, pico, joe, ed, jed, or emacs. Or, you can use the Modwest PHP Configurator.

The PHP Configurator is a simple web-based interface for configuring the PHP installation inside your hosting account. All aspects of PHP's behavior, including which major version of PHP runs your *.php files by default, as well as global settings, extensions, sessions, and error handling, can be configured as desired.

Context Consistency

At other PHP web hosts, you've probably experienced these typical problems:

Difficulty editing or deleting files created by your PHP script
Insecure file permissions required (They may require you to set "world writable", or "777" permissions on certain files)
Errors related to PHP "safe mode" restrictions require work-arounds
Confusing development due to having multiple directory paths

Many will tell you that the only way to get around these issues is to invest in a dedicated server. We've proven otherwise, by making our shared system smarter. Your scripts will run as your user, in the context of your account. And, the root directory is indeed "/", from the perspective of your shell account, FTP access, and your website script files.

How it works...

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Context Consistency Explained

Web developers typically interact with their website files in three distinct ways, or contexts.

File upload/download (FTP or SCP)
Command line (SSH)
Web browser

The problem at many web hosts is that each of these contexts has its own set of rules. These rule mismatches at the very least create confusion, but can also complicate the development process or even degrade security.

For example, files created via FTP or SSH may be owned by the developer's user account (or UID), but files created by website PHP scripts are owned by a different UID, such as "apache", "nobody", or "www-data". As a result, either you cannot remove and edit files created by your scripts, or your script cannot create data files at all. The most common error is "Permission denied", requiring knowledge and execution of Unix commands such as chmod and chown on a case-by-case basis.

Many popular PHP packages do their best to work around this by advising certain directories be set to "world writable" permissions such as "666" or "777". This configuration is fundamentally insecure, because it allows any process running on the server to delete or change your data! (In order to maintain as secure a shared environment as reasonably possible, our servers do not allow world-writable scripts to execute.)

An additional complication you might have endured at other hosts is inconsistent directory paths. For example, when you browse your account via FTP (or WinSCP), the top-level (or "root") directory might be simply "/". However, when you want your PHP script to write to a log file, you need to know a full server path such as /home/web/users/myuser.

At Modwest, you will only need to remember one file system path (for the three contexts), you will not be required to set insecure file permissions, and you will have full control of the files inside your account. Why settle for anything else?

PHP5, PHP4, and much more...

In 2004, the PHP development team released PHP5, a major upgrade to the already robust and easy-to-use PHP4. In fact, much of PHP5 was rewritten from scratch, and its release represents an important maturation of the PHP programming language.

Modwest supports both PHP4 and PHP5, so you can mix-and-match as the need arises, or gradually migrate your web application from PHP4 to PHP5 over time. Full instructions for using PHP5 at Modwest are included in the Modwest Knowledge Base.

Modwest also supports these other popular packages, languages, extensions, and modules.

Apache, PHP 4.4.6 and PHP5, MySQL 4.1 and MySQL 5, Perl, Python, Ruby, CVS, SVN, True Type fonts with Freetype, Ghostscript, GNU Gettext, JPEG-lib 6b, NetPBM graphics tools, ImageMagick image manipulation, MivaScript, and more...

PHP modules (see complete PHP configuration for PHP4 and PHP 5): PEAR, BCMath, Bzip2, cal, Ctype, CURL, Cybercash, dba, dBase, dbx, DOM XML, Exif (undocumented digital camera image functions), Adobe FDF, Filepro, FTP, GD lib, Gettext, GMP, iconv, IMAP, LDAP, mailparse, Multi-Byte Strings, MCAL, Mcrypt, Mhash, Ming SWF, mnoGoSearch, MySQL, Unified ODBC, OpenSSL, Perl Compatible Regex, POSIX, PostgreSQL, Pspell, PDFlib, Pfpro (Payflow Pro), (GNU) Recode, Semaphore and System V Shared Memory, Shockwave Flash, shmop Shared Memory, Sockets, WDDX, XML, XMLRPC, XSLT Sablotron, YATS, Zip, Zlib and the Zend Optimizer.

Expert PHP Support

We specialize in PHP development, and our support team takes pride in giving fast, direct, and accurate responses to your questions.

Command-line Control

SSH into your account to use most standard Linux/Unix utilities and editors.

MySQL

Most of our shared hosting plans include one of more MySQL databases (4.1 and MySQL 5), and so you'll be able to leverage the powerful combination of MySQL and PHP to build dynamic web sites. We include a powerful web-based database management tool (phpMyAdmin) accessible through Modwest OnSite.

Modwest® OnSite

Our control panel gives developers immediate, hands-on control over their databases, PHP extensions, and folder password protection (.htaccess) rules.

PHP Hosting Packages

Choose a PHP hosting package...