It’s been a while now since the folks at PHP supported PHP 4 but you have to be careful when choosing a new web host. There still seem to be lots of web hosting companies that are stuck behind the times and only offer PHP 4. It’s important when signing up for web hosting that you check to see the current software versions your hosting comes with.
There are some great features nowadays like; PHP Nuke, Mambo and Joomla, PHP 5, Perl 5, Python, Ruby/Ruby On Rails and Javascript/DHTML just to name a few. An easy way to check to see which version the PHP web hosting company supports is to ask for their ” phpinfo ” file. This file contains all the current software information from your hosting provider.
If you are currently with a web host that only offers PHP 4 ask them about PHP 5. There are numerous host that will only upgrade after a client has mentioned it to them or in some cases the host forgot to make the upgrade all together. This goes for any other software you are looking for, make a quick call and see if it’s available on your host.