[Gmail-Lounge] Re: php questions

Kass Lloyd <kasslloyd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>On 12/3/05, Allen Day <so.orange@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> As near as I can tell, the "most web hosts" that Kass is talking about is
>> from personal experience with the likes of geocities, angefire, tripod and
>> maybe godaddy.com (I don't know where they stand on it -- but they're cheap
>> ;)
>>
>> I know I wouldn't bother with a web host that imposed such limitations on
>> .htaccess -- I don't much care for hosts that don't give me shell access,
>> either -- but I imagine only reckless, lousy hosts would provide that too
>> :-)
>
>Godaddy or any other major web hosting company will not provide you
>mod_rewrite, the ability to change what files are executed as scripts,
>or any other feature like that, never shell access. These are all
>considered "bad" in the security world.

You need to stop saying most. Godaddy was used as an example because I
hardly see it as an exemplary host. As for other major web hosts, you're
mistaken -- plenty of great ones provide these services -- and without
requiring dedicated hosting. Do you know why they provide these services?
Not because they're fools, but rather because serious web developers
-require- these features in order to give their business.

>The companies that do provide you tons of access are the tiny
>fly-by-night operations who will give customers that kind of access
>out of ignorance or just to keep customers without regard to the
>system's security or the security of the other customers data.

You've said this before, but it's a statement without base.

>And quite frankly, mod_rewrite and executing odd types as scripts are
>not neccessary for "normal" websites anyway. One thing that is
>slightly annoying is Godaddy dosn't support the Path Info type of urls
>for tricking like Google into thinking a page isn't dynamic. Google
>dosn't like to index many dynamic pages.. thats the only real concern.

mod_rewrite is important for web developers who want their url's to be
readable -- often utilized in custom(ized) blog packages -- rather than an
ugly URL full of GET variables, you have what appears to be a directory
structure. There are other uses as well . . . when it comes down to it, is
it possible to function without access to these things? Yes. Are there a
lot of serious web developers who won't go with a hosting company that
provides them? Plenty. And more often than not, we stick with a company
for years . . . hmn . . . guess they weren't fly-by-nite after all.