Upgrading GoDaddy Hosting to PHP 5.x from PHP 4.3.11

Update 2/22/2010: It looks like changing .htaccess is no longer necessary. After you select PHP 5.x, your site will begin using version 5.2.5 without any further configuration.

The following applies to older domains. As of early 2009, newly purchased linux hosting plans are running PHP 5.2.8, while older plans, once updated, only go up to PHP 5.2.5. I’ve had Ardamis.com hosted at GoDaddy since 2005, and quite awhile ago I thought I had upgraded to PHP version 5 from 4.3.11, but tonight I happened to check with phpinfo and found I was still on version 4.

In the unheard of ten minutes that I was on hold waiting for technical support, I figured out how to really run my pages on PHP 5.x (in this case, 5.2.5).

Log in and go to your Hosting Control Center. You must be running Hosting Configuration 2.0 to go any further, so if you haven’t touched your domain in years, do that first.

Click on Content, then Add-On Languages. Next to PHP Version, select PHP 5.x and click Continue. You’ll get a message that “Changing to PHP 5.x may make your PHP files run incorrectly.” Highly unlikely these days, but OK, you’ve been warned. Notice, too that it says “PHP 5.x will be activated“. Click Update.

It may take awhile for this change to be processed by the server, but once your Account Summary is displaying PHP Version: 5.x, it’s time for the really important part.

You see, you’ve only made PHP 5.x available at this point. Your *.php files are still running in 4.x. Go ahead and check phpinfo again.

Now, you could simply edit .htaccess to change the extensions, like so:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php4

More details at http://help.godaddy.com/article/1082

But if you’re squeamish about changing .htaccess yourself, there’s another way to set 5.x to be the default handler for *.php files. All the following does, strangely enough, is to add the AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php to the beginning of your .htaccess file.

Back in the Hosting Control Center, click on Settings, then File Extension. If the change to 5.x has been completed, you’ll see at the bottom of the available extensions list, “Extension -> .php | Runs Under -> PHP 5.x” If it’s not there, stop here and come back in an hour or so.

Click on Custom Extensions at the left. This should be empty, with a message stating “No custom extensions have been created.”

Click on Default Extensions and then click on the Edit button (it looks like a piece of paper and a pencil) to the right of .php | PHP 5.x. Click on Continue.

Click again on the Custom Extensions button on the left, and you should now see “Extension -> .php | Runs Under -> PHP 5.x”. Check your phpinfo page one more time, and it should report PHP 5.x.

It’s unfortunate we even have to do this for our older domains, but I asked the tech support guy if I could somehow get on to PHP 5.2.8, and he said nope, that the newer servers have the more recent version but the older servers are stuck back in 2007.