Practical PHP Programming:Choosing an ISP
From IpbWiki
If you are not going to be running your own server, you will need to rely on an ISP to host your site for you. There are several key things you need to consider when choosing your ISP, with the ideal answer in brackets:
- Do they make PHP available? (yes)
- If so, what version, and how often do they upgrade? (v5, every release, delayed by one month in case of bugs)
- Which extensions do they have enabled? (GD2, IMAP, various databases)
- Will they enable other extensions on demand from customers? (yes)
- Do they run PHP in safe mode? (no)
- Do they use a PHP accelerator (yes, any will do)
- Do they make MySQL available? (yes)
- If so, what version, and how often do they upgrade? (v4, not very often)
- Do they make remote MySQL access available so that you can use the MySQL monitor from your computer? (yes)