1and1 and PHP5

While using Wordpress with 1and1, I wanted to enable the use of PHP5 for a plugin. Couple of mistakes on my part was that I named .htaccess incorrectly as ".htacess" in the folder of my site.

Then after getting PHP5 recognized on my site, I had to uninstall the plugin. Reinstall, and then re-enable, then lastly all was well.

From 1and1:

Enabling PHP5

With 1&1 Linux hosting packages you have the choice between PHP 4 and PHP 5. To distinguish a script as PHP 5, simply name the script with the file extension .php5.

While the PHP developers have done their utmost to ensure compatibility, we cannot guarantee that PHP 4 scripts will function 100% correctly under PHP 5.

Please note that in contrast to PHP 4, the default for the variable RegisterGlobals and allow_url_fopen is "off".

By default Apache uses PHP 4 for .php extension. If you don't want to rename all your scripts to .php5 you can do the following:

Create a .htaccess file and place the following line:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php 

This will tell Apache to use PHP 5 instead of PHP 4 for the extension .php in the directory the .htaccess is placed and all sub-directories under it.

Checking your PHP version

One way to find out what version of PHP is currently being used by one of your sites is to create a PHP page with the phpversion(); function. Save this file as phpVersion.php to the same folder where all of your site files are located. Then access this page in a browser such as http://domain.com/phpVersion.php and view the output.

<?php 
echo "The current PHP version being used is: " . phpversion ( ); 
?>