Drupal 6 includes some handy features to help start the transition into using PHP 5 in our creations. But, as PHP 4 nears the end of it's life in a couple weeks there are many hosts who haven't switched to PHP 5 or are only updating to PHP 5.0, like Media Temples dedicated virtual server packages are planning.
It's time to push the hosts to upgrade. So, if your host isn't offering PHP 5.2 or not planning on it in the short term consider sending them an email or give them a phone call asking for it.
And, if your host decides to offer PHP 5.2 as fastcgi for an alternative you amy want to consider the performance considerations of such a move.
Media Temple
We've been using Media Temple at work, and I have to say I'm pretty unimpressed with their feature-set. They don't keep updates of software running, sticking with old versions of both PHP and MySQL. Seriously, those are probably the most frequently used software services on their servers and they don't update them. They're even running an older version of PHP 4.
Plesks Fault
This is really about plesk. Since tMedia Temple use plesk to do what they do on the dv accounts they (and everyone else who uses plesk) are at the mercy of plesk being pretty far behind.
I'm actually digging around to see what other hosts provide the performance and the bandwidth they do as a possible switch at some point in the future. Suggestions are welcome.
plesk
I don't know nothing about plesk, just google around..
Plesk works with PHP 5 without problems.
http://forum.swsoft.com/showpost.php?p=194209&postcount=2
Version
With what version of PHP. I have PHP 5.1 available to me via fastcgi.
While I don't doubt that PHP 5.2 works with plesk that's not the issue. Since it isn't bundled with plesk it's not one of those easy things to switch to.
Technically, If I want I could compile the latest version of 5.2 and install that. But, then I have deviated so much from what they support that I have to handle my own maintenance.
It simple becomes a pain. And, the chain of the support goes up to plesk not offering it out of the box.
RE: Media Temple
I got PHP5 running on Media Temple pretty easily, but I have dedicated virtual hosting: Upgrade to PHP5 on (dv) 3.0 Dedicated Virtual Servers
CakePHP still supports PHP4 because it is still widely being used. I agree though, it is time for everyone to upgrade.
PHP 5.2
Marc - This issue is two fold.
1) What you installed it PHP 5.1. What they were claiming when I contacted support and sales is that the upgrade on the dvs will be PHP 5.0. For the Go PHP 5 effort and for many of the big projects out there PHP 5.2 is required. They have no support for that nor do they have support for that on their radar.
2) The article you directed me to tells you how to run PHP 5.1 via fastcgi. Running PHP this way causes a significant performance problem. Your resources can't do nearly the same amount of work as when PHP is running as an Apache module.
So, there are some serious limitations here. It's time to upgrade. It's time to put a little pressure on.
fastcgi?
The page you linked to doesn't have much about fastcgi :(
But this page does: http://buytaert.net/drupal-webserver-configurations-compared
I assume that's what you meant to link to.
doh
Nice catch. I grabbed the wrong page in my haste. Thanks for posting the correction. I updated the post to the correct link.
More support . . .
I'm surprised you didn't mention this site: http://www.gophp5.org/