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Which development environment do you primarily use?  If you do work for clients, do most of your clients have access to PHP 5 if they have their own hosting accounts or do you find that you are still stuck with PHP 4 for a lot of the work you do?

The only clients I encounter without PHP5 support are larger sized companies with in house IT teams that have no knowledge of web development.  These clients are usually looking to upgrade their old website and are running on outdated software.  This year I encountered a client that was running PHP3.  Scary stuff.  Most of the time I can get the IT group to upgrade, but it takes a while and you have to work through those horrible email chains made up of 1% of people who have any clue about what is actually being discussed.  Other than that, I usually have control over the infrastructure and can install whatever software I want.  I rarely put clients on shared machines, and if I do, I’ll only put them in the hands of competent and modern providers who regular install software updates.  If a client is using a crap provider, I will tell them and move their site asap.  PHP4 is for the dogs.

PHP3!!!  WOW!  Scary indeed!!!

Yes.  The funniest part surrounded our conversation.  I was talking to the IT lead and discussing that I would like to use WP to implement a blog that we were going with.  He came back at me saying that WP is insecure and that if I installed it I would need to make sure I used the latest version and keep him up to date with new releases.  NP on my end.  So I started listing the minimal requirements and he dropped the PHP3 bomb on me.  It was hard not to laugh after having him break me down on security practices.  It was an extension to their current site, tight deadline, and too much red tape to get any type of update in there.  We ended up hosting the component on one of our machines.  Corporate clients can be a pain, but they pay well.

Being just a silly student with little to no money left for vps or whatever, I am forced to use shared hosting. My clients so far have been individuals looking for small websites, so shared hosting was fine for them too.

I found a hoster here in Belgium that’s very cheap and where most of my sites go. They’re certainly not the best out there and I don’t have access to anything except my own directory but luckily they’re up to date. So PHP5 for me. Yes.

I’m on a shared host, and it’s running PHP 5.2.3. It’s great! I plan to move onto a VPS soon, so I will be updating PHP whenever a new stable build comes.

5 here, but still having to keep 4 in mind for my application.

most of my developments are in PHP 5.

I’m on a shared host, and it’s running PHP 5.2.3. It’s great! I plan to move onto a VPS soon, so I will be updating PHP whenever a new stable build comes.

Someone on this board recommended Slicehost to me and I think they are great.  I originally looked into them for a large project (which is still in planning stages and will eventually live on Slicehost) and ended up buying some hosting to test their service.  I liked it so much that I have already moved my personal site to them.  The price is right and the power is nice.  I didn’t manually install PHP on those machines though.  Instead I used the package manager to handle all of the details - running 5.2.4 with suhosin which is good enough for me.  When you use package managers you won’t get the releases as fast, but upgrading is easy.

I’m on a shared host, and it’s running PHP 5.2.3. It’s great! I plan to move onto a VPS soon, so I will be updating PHP whenever a new stable build comes.

Someone on this board recommended Slicehost to me and I think they are great.  I originally looked into them for a large project (which is still in planning stages and will eventually live on Slicehost) and ended up buying some hosting to test their service.  I liked it so much that I have already moved my personal site to them.  The price is right and the power is nice.  I didn’t manually install PHP on those machines though.  Instead I used the package manager to handle all of the details - running 5.2.4 with suhosin which is good enough for me.  When you use package managers you won’t get the releases as fast, but upgrading is easy.

Thanks for the recommendation! It’s funny because they are the company I was going to buy from! 😛

Nice.  See you on the boards. 😊

Nginx + PHP FastCGI burns on those servers.

i looooooooooove PHP5, the features are that powerful - I will never ever look back, I deny any activity in php4 projects and namespaces are my new friends.