If a reputable host needs PHP4 support to keep older clients happy they would install PHP5 along side it and show the users how to make use of both. PHP4 is so 3 years ago.
Lots of hosts still run 4.4 We only upgraded to default PHP5 very recently. But yeah, you can make use of both providing you set it up correctly.
PHP4 is still being developed, theres no reason not to have it installed. If the host doenst know php, then they aren't going to fancy all the problems that arise when they upgrade thier machine to a new version of php, the problems dont arise with professionally written scripts they arise with personal websites and snippets of code, and if you don't know how to fix that then it would be a pretty stupid decision to break it. You can built php5 as a CGI and run it alongside php4 ( so long as php4 is an apache dso and not a cgi binary ), that's what they should do really, it's not difficult to build php like that, and there are scripts available to do it for you/them.
The best way to avoid problems with the whole PHP4 + PHP5 thing is to simply have both. This is what we do to avoid this exact problem. PPHP4 is an apache module and PHP5 is a CGI binary. The user wants php5 they specify .php5 or they make a .htaccess with the following: AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php .php4 .php3 .phtml From there they could use .php, .php4 ect. and it should go to php5
Yes most hosts run PHP4 as their latest / default, but most decent hosts also run it alongside PHP5 to allow both to be ran (since in reality theres no real reason not to use PHP5 except older scripts). InFloW covered it
I don't, I haven't had php4 since php5.0.1 was released, but then I'm confident I can fix any problems that arise by doing that, and a lot of hosts dont have that so they keep it..... There's nothing wrong with php4, it's still a real powerful language, and most of the c code that makes 4=5 can be rewritten in php, or downloaded from PEAR ( written by someone else ), or written yourself if you know some c/php......
Right, but my host told me that 4.4.4 was the latest version they had. It took them three weeks to give me this response, and I recently made the request to be moved to a PHP 5 server where I was again promised that it would take no more than a day. We'll see how things go. Maybe it's time I found a new host.
Maybe your hosting company is just using CPanel, or some other control panel, to manage their servers, which until a few days ago officially supported PHP4 only. They just don't want to get their hands dirty or don't have he confidence that they can do it safely.
cPanel supports PHP5 and has for ages you just need to recompile apache using easyapache. Now what it does not support is compiling 2 php versions at once. Of course most cPanel hosts have managed to install both 4 and 5 anyways using guides so I don't think it's a good excuse.