(gs) New PHP Selector - Coming Soon
We have some good news today for PHP users on the (gs) Grid-Service. Available for immediate use, (mt) Media Temple has released new and updated PHP versions. Coming soon, customers will have a new, simple method for dealing with PHP versions and updates. To use the new versions now, please see the wiki: http://mdtm.pl/dg7e5i. To learn more about what’s coming, please read on.
New PHP Version Selector:
The enhanced PHP Selector will offer three options for setting the PHP version of your sites on the (gs) Grid-Service:
CURRENT STABLE
By choosing this option, PHP will be set to a version that we determine to be current and stable for the (gs) Grid-Service. It may not always be the latest stable release offered on the PHP website, but rather a recent version that has been tested and proven to work well with the (gs) Grid-Service.
Example: As a customer, you set your PHP version to be CURRENT STABLE. Your sites will use PHP 5.2.14. When we validate that PHP 5.3.2 works well on (gs), we will make that version CURRENT STABLE, and your sites will then automatically be using PHP 5.3.2. You will be notified in the AccountCenter and the version will continue to change throughout the year.
EXPERIMENTAL
By choosing this option, PHP will be set to a very recent and untested version.
Example: As a customer, you set your PHP version to be EXPERIMENTAL. Your sites will use PHP 5.3.2. When we install a new version, your sites will automatically update. The new version may not have been tested with the (gs) Grid-Service.
SPECIFIC VERSION
This option allows you to see all versions of PHP installed in the (gs) Grid-Service and allows you to lock PHP to a specific version.
If you lock to a specific version that becomes old or insecure, the (gs) Grid-Service will notify you and update your PHP version to the next highest number. This process was chosen to minimize any impact to applications resulting from incompatibilities between PHP versions.
Transition:
To get ready for these new changes, (mt) Media Temple recently began provisioning all new sites with Suhosin PHP 5.2.14.
We will announce to customers when the New PHP Selector is available, and we will encourage customers to use the new tool to set the most appropriate option for each site. By default we will set every new site to use the CURRENT STABLE option. Manual version selection through .htaccess files will continue to be available.
As a courtesy to help customers avoid application incompatibilities, we will leave PHP 4.4 installed and allow its use via the SPECIFIC VERSION option. However, we will eventually no longer support PHP 4.4 and it will be removed. At that time, all of your sites will be set to use the CURRENT STABLE option (PHP 5.2.14) – unless you have already chosen a higher version.
