Free web hosting with PHP?

[Da-Spit]

Hi,
I'm trying to learn PHP, and don't really have the time to set up a my own server to test my scripts, so I was wondering does anyone know a good FREE Hosting Service with PHP? I don't care about how much space I get, or if it has banner ads, etc.. as long as it's free and supports PHP. Thanks in advance!

[kandieman101]

If you go to http://www.phpgeek.com/, you can get PHPTriad (For windows) I am assuming that you are running windows on your PC. It installs Apache, PHP, and MySQL for windows, and I use it myself.

Obviously it won't have every single feature, but I have developed a photo album, news posting, guestbook, poll, and many other scripts on my windows machine, and they all run perfectly fine.

Easy to set up and run, http://localhost

Hope that helps!

[jstarkey]

Moved from the CL.

Also, if you do a search, I think you'll find quite a lot of info related to hosting.

[l0ungeb0y]

No, I don't know any free PHP hosts.
You can try: http://www.phphost.com/index.php3?action=rates
they cost 10.00 per month with a $50.00 setup fee (waived if you sign up for a year)

The fact is if you want to learn PHP and do anything remotely interesting with it, you will want to get your own server or atleast a decent rackspace.

[kandieman101]

Actually, I remember a site that had a listing of free php hosts. Lucky me, I managed to re-find it!

http://www.free-php-hosting.com <-- I haven't tried it out myself, but there are multiple hosts, I am sure one of them will be good. I am going to assume these will be JUST for testing, because if you want to actually provide quality php scripts to your visitors, you're going to have to pay something.

[Da-Spit]

Thanks for the link kandieman! I'm checking out at the moment.

[Da-Spit]

Wow thx!!! That software is awesome, and so easy to use!

[snowdude]

http://www.tripod.lycos.co.uk/
Includes:
50MB disk space
Cool add-ons
Website stats
PHP4U/MySQL


http://www.flashmaster.ru/eng/

http://webhosting.bootbox.net/freehosting.htm


http://www.port5.com/

http://www.coolfreepages.com

http://www.spaceport.com

http://www.united.net.kg

http://www.t35.com

http://www.f2g.net

http://www.free-php-hosting.com/

-----------------------------------------------

Their are some - The problem with Free Hosting is that - You never know what your going to get - Sometimes they have waiting lists as well. Most of the time their will be some type of Advertising as well.

I haven't checked out any of the above Links for a long time - So I don't know what you'll Find.

I would recommend Paying for a Host - If your going to Use Free Hosting, You would be MUCH better off just installing PHP/Apache on your Home computer and using that.

Free Hosting is basically not worth it - Might be free, but the Time and frustration with Free Hosting is not worth it.

[Da-Spit]

Yeah, thx. I'm using Apache right now as it came with that PHPTriad.

[Musicman]

Hi,

arguments in favor of running on your own box:
cheap hosts rarely give you error logs, so if your script does not even start due to a single missing quote, and the host has decided to not show error messages to the visitor (it is a good setting: you dont want your visitors to know where your script fails), you are left somewhat left blind.
You can try out a lot of details that are hard to find in the manuals, say about creative uses of htaccess. Obviously, once you want to upload a site to a real server, you have to make sure that they do not block the features you want to use
With a local database, you can turn on query logging - if your script does not work as expected, you may be able to find the reason by just looking at the last few mysql queries
You can test your flash movies under real-life conditions: the authoring environment sometimes behaves slightly different from a movie playing in the browser, and it does not have a third-party restriction. Just publish your movie into your htdocs folder and test it from your browser instead. If you want to see the third-party restriction work, add an alternate name to your /etc/hosts file or local dns, run the movie from localhost, and let it post the contact form to http://mycomputer/mail.php; sitting right there you can check your access log and see that nothing was posted at all

Musicman

[l0ungeb0y]

Musicman has some good points about having your own box.

But he missed a couple really crucial items.
So I'll fill in...

If you plan on ever getting any decent work as a PHP developer (or any other server-side language for that matter) you will need to demonstrate the following abilities:

1) Be able to setup and administer Apache
2) Be able to install and configure shared libraries
such as mCrypt, pdfLib, ming, cUrl and what have you
for advanced feature sets
3) Be able to install and configure a PHP binary
4) Be able to install and configure database servers such as MySQL, postGres, Informix and Oracle as well as successsfully install and configure their appropriate clients and load their extensions into PHP for API usage.
5) Be able to understand user and file permissions, FTP configueration and shell scripting for automated tasks via Crontab.

...just to name a few.
But to do these, you'll need root to what ever server you are on, as only root can install and configure items such as those.

Now, I know you're just a newbie.
But, in a bit, you'll really need to start considering these issues to be able to stand up and land some clients.

How I started out a few years ago was very similar.
I was dirt poor and couldn't afford a server.
And what's more, I didn't even know PHP.
Fortunately, I landed a client and had them pay for one for me (good to have hypnotic powers), I went out and bought some books on PHP and Linux and learned very quickly how to do all the items above, now I get large sized clients and don't have to hypnotize people anymore.

[JerryJ]

You don't have to be root to do all that was posted right above, if you're server admin has taken the time to setup the server with the appropriate configurations.

Using certain wrappers, you can create a server environment where php.ini files can be altered for each user individually (and by the user).

One example, http://www.dream-server.com

Jerry

[l0ungeb0y]

Originally posted by JerryJ
You don't have to be root to do all that was posted right above, if you're server admin has taken the time to setup the server with the appropriate configurations.

Point taken,
but very rare indeed.
Most hosts would feel it a security risk to allow such control. I know a lot of vserver hosts give you admin powers, but what you can actually do with it is limited.

There are tools such as vchown and others that give access to 'virtual root cmnds' to your user shell, but that still is very lacking. As far as PHP.ini files, that is nothing.

I'm talking about taking a PHP source distro and doing this:

./configure' '--with-apxs=/usr/local/www/bin/apxs' '--with-mysql=/usr/local' '--with-curl=/usr/local/bin' '--with-gd=/usr/local' '--with-freetype' '--with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib' '--with-imap' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local' '--with-png-dir=/usr/local' '--with-tiff-dir=/usr/local/bin' '--with-ming' '--with-mcrypt=/usr/local/lib' '--with-pdflib=/usr/local/pdflib-4.0.1' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-freetype-4bit-antialias-hack' '--enable-overload'

./make
./make install

cd /usr/local/www/bin
./apachectl restart

That entire sequence save the change dir requires root.
Apache wont restart for just anyone and PHP wont just build itself into /usr/local/lib where only root has write access.

Also php.ini is nothing but an .ini file, just some settings
most of which you can set through your scripts with an
<? ini_set('var','val'); ?>

There is very little you can do with php.ini, besides set values that deal with optional settings, like whether or not to use trans-sid to propogate session ids.

Adding external extensions require a rebuild of the PHP binary and the ability to actually install and link those extensions in the first place, and once again that takes root.

Different hosts, will provide different options to their users. And different people have different needs.
However, the point I've been making here is that if one is serious about getting into server side development, one __must__ learn how to be captain of the server and own his/her domain and not rely upon shell scripts provided by their hosts to do so.

But, if you are just a hobbyist, it probably doesn't matter since you wont care... untill you start getting good and thinking it might be cool to add ming (flash for PHP) and pdfLib support amongst other things after you get board with plain jane stuff like MySQL connections.

[Da-Spit]

Thanks for the advice guys! Just another question, how do I change file permissions for stuff on my server? I know it may seem a stupid question, but I managed to do it when I was uploading files to my free host via FTP, but how do I do it on my local host?

[kandieman101]

Hmm, come to think of it, I don't know! I haven't run into any problems with file permission thus far, I am GUESSING that maybe you don't even have to?

Because, I have some local files that do have to change permission when uploaded, but are fine offline.

[Musicman]

Hi,

if you are running the kind of system that requires chmod, you can just type
chmod 755 yourscript.cgi
or similar at the shell prompt

Musicman