PHP 5.2.17 available

In an earlier post, we described how we’re phasing out PHP 5.2.6 in favor of the newer PHP 5.3 series.

Our original intention was to remove the long-obsolete 5.2 series entirely. However, a small number of customers have told us they’re unable to update their scripts to work with PHP 5.3, usually because the script is more than five years old and no newer version is available.

To help these customers, we’re making an extra version of PHP available: version 5.2.17. That’s still an outdated version, but for technical reasons we’re able to support it for a while longer than PHP 5.2.6, giving customers at least six extra months — perhaps even longer — before PHP 5.3 is the oldest version available on our servers.

We still recommend that all customers use the PHP 5.3 series. However, if you’re unable to do that, you can now use our “My Account” control panel to choose PHP 5.2.17 instead:

  1. Login to the “My Account” control panel.
  2. Click PHP Settings.
  3. Choose the Use PHP 5.2.17 option.
  4. Click Save Settings.

Our previously announced schedule to remove PHP 5.2.6 still applies, except that PHP 5.2.6 customers will be switched to version 5.2.17 (instead of all the way to the 5.3 series) if they don’t upgrade to 5.3 themselves.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.19

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.19 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.18 to PHP 5.3.19 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.18

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.18 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.17 to PHP 5.3.18 on our servers as a result.

Upgrading to PHP 5.3

As described in a previous blog post, we’re removing the obsolete PHP version 5.2 from our servers. Our customers should only be using the newer PHP 5.3 series.

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PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.17

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.17 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.16 to PHP 5.3.17 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.2.6 being phased out

This post was updated November 30, 2012 to reflect the additional availability of PHP 5.2.17.

We currently offer PHP versions 5.2.6, 5.2.17, and the 5.3 series. You can choose which version your account uses in the “PHP Settings” section of our “My Account” control panel.

PHP 5.2 has been obsolete for many years. Because of that, we’re beginning the process of removing PHP 5.2.6 from our servers and encouraging customers to switch to PHP 5.3. (PHP 5.2.17 is still available for now, but discouraged.)

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PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.16

Shortly after we made PHP 5.3.15 available to hosting customers, the PHP team announced the release of version 5.3.16 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.15 to PHP 5.3.16 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.3.15 available

PHP 5.3.15 is now available on all hosting accounts. It’s the default for new customers, and existing customers can update their PHP version using the “PHP Settings” link in our “My Account” control panel.

If you’re an existing customer using an older version of PHP, we haven’t yet changed your PHP version. However, we will begin doing that in about 30 days (we’ll announce that separately), so we recommend that you upgrade now. That way, if you find you’re using an outdated PHP script that isn’t compatible, you can set PHP back to the previous version and work to update the script. The old PHP 5.2 series will be removed from our servers by the end of 2012.

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Brief scheduled maintenance for MySQL update March 9, 2012 (completed)

Between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM Pacific time on Friday March 9, 2012, we’ll be updating the MySQL database software on all our hosting servers. This will cause a Web site service interruption of about 30 seconds for some customers at some time during this period. E-mail will not be affected.

This maintenance is necessary to install a mandatory MySQL security update that will upgrade the MySQL version to 5.1.61. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

Update 10:13 PM: The maintenance was completed with less than 30 seconds downtime on each server. Customers should not notice any changes, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or problems.

Data center move complete

As a followup to our previous posts about the move to a new primary data center, we want to confirm to our customers that the change was successfully completed.

Due to unrelated network outages at the old data center, we accelerated the original schedule mentioned in that post. Almost all customer sites were moved by October 7, and the remainder (a small handful of customer sites that needed manual intervention due to old software that was incompatible with the Debian Linux software update) were moved as of October 18. Everything is, and has been, working normally.

I want to again take the time to apologize to our customers for the service interruptions that occurred because of the original power problem and the later network problem. They weren’t acceptable. We know you count on us for your success, and we’re constantly working to improve reliability.