PHP 5 is now default on our servers!

[BR-Admin]

Dear Valued Customers,

With immediate effect, all our servers will run PHP 5 by default. PHP 4 is still available on a request only basis.

Affected Customers
================
- All Shared Hosting Customers,
- All Reseller Hosting Customers, and
- All Email/Newsletter Hosting Customers


Description of PHP switch
=======================
The last update for PHP 4 was released on August 2008. Till now, there is no further release for the version. As an ongoing effort for us to maintain good quality, security and reliability to our customers, Bestreseller has made the decision to schedule a switch to all our existing shared servers currently running PHP 4 to PHP 5 (by default).

Following are some of the benefits that can be gain from switching to the current PHP 5 version:

• PHP 5 is the current industry-standard PHP version and updates are available to address any incoming bugs and issues that would be prone to security-related incidents.

• A number of new features and design changes were developed and are being developed that enable PHP 5 users to develop more robust, secure and feature-rich software faster and easier. These features are not found in older versions of PHP 4 and are difficult to emulate on the current PHP 5. Features include fast and easy XML support for improved web services, better time zone handling, improved database and input tools which allow for better security.

• Projects that support PHP 4 cannot make use of the newer features offered on PHP 5. To date, many leading open source projects had and will be dropping legacy support for PHP 4 and we believe that we can break that cycle and encourage web hosts to upgrade and allow open source developers to build faster, more secure, more powerful web applications.

• New security component such as filter extension is added and available to allow developer to read input more safely and securely, hence making projects more secure, less error prone and harder to compromise.

• With the advent of AJAX and the rising popularity for its functionality, the new PHP 5 offers a fast, native mechanism for reading and writing from JSON, a way of specifying data that both Java script in the web browser and PHP or other languages on the server can understand, making writing dynamic rich client applications easier and possible.

• PHP 4 was released in 2000, and last had a serious functional update in 2003. The last minor update to PHP 4 was last released on August 2008 and no further update is released after. Without any new updates to PHP 4, future compromises are potential.

• PHP 4 had a number of shortcomings, many of which had been resolved in PHP 5. For example, modern “Web Services” built on XML. In PHP 4, XML handling is a slow and difficult process, hence making it harder for developers to support web services in PHP applications. PHP 5 eliminates such problem and offers a better, faster and easier XML processing, enabling web developers to build faster and feature-rich web applications.

• PHP 4 adopts a completely separate set of functions for every different database that PHP supports, hence making supporting multiple databases difficult to achieve. Scripts developed under PHP 4 are constantly required to be check against “SQL injection” to identify any security hole that could lead to a potential intrusion. A robust database system called PDO offered on PHP 5 provides a single interface to all of PHP supported databases and handles protecting against SQL Injection automatically, hence minimizing intrusion risks and making web applications and web sites safer.

• PHP 5 is faster, more stable and contains fewer bugs as compared to PHP 4.

• Support for true objection orientation and improved time zone handling on PHP 5.


Important Note to all PHP 4 customers (#)
==================================
All existing customers are strongly encouraged to check their current scripts hosted on our servers. Should any customer requires their scripts/websites to be kept on PHP 4, you will need to inform us by 26 July 2009 (latest) by sending us a list of the affected domain names with attached usernames for easy reference via email to support@bestreseller.com

Please be informed that PHP 4 will still be kept available till the end of year 2009 on all our shared servers. However, after 2009, we may deprecate it and remove the version totally. As such, we urged that all customers to ensure that your scripts hosted on our servers are PHP 5 compatible.

Kindly also be informed that Bestreseller will not be helping customers to check their scripts. Customers are advised to consult their programmers for advices.

Bestreseller will only provide information and help on best-effort basis.

If you need any assistance or further information, please feel free to contact us by emailing support@bestreseller.com


Thank you.

Best Regards,

--- BestReseller.com: Only the Best! ---

CM Ho
-- and the team at BestReseller.com
http://www.bestreseller.com

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