sm3004 Posted January 15, 2010 Share Posted January 15, 2010 Hi,I am moving my site from HostGator shared hosting to a VPS plan. What is the ideal version of PHP to use with PrestaShop 1.2.5? I have read the System Requirements page on the download page here, but it only tells me which versions of PHP have bugs, instead I would like to know which version I can use to have the minimum amount of problems in the future.Under shared hosting, I was using PHP 5.2.12 and it seemed to be fine, didn't have any noticeable bugs while I was testing.Apache version was 2.2.14 Unix and MySQL version was 5.1.30.Am I safe to use these setting or are there more recommendable ones available. Would love to have the best combo, since HostGator VPS gives you the option of what you want to use!Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tropical Dream Posted March 11, 2010 Share Posted March 11, 2010 I'm currently looking for a good web hosting for my Prestashop store.I notice that Prestashop does not support PHP 5.2.1. BUT can we consider PHP 5.2.1 and PHP 5.2.12 the same? I think Hostgator uses PHP 5.2.12, and that's why I am hesitating to go with them.also, why are you moving to the VPS plan? did you have a slow website on Hostgator shared hosting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sm3004 Posted March 11, 2010 Author Share Posted March 11, 2010 I already moved to a VPS plan because we get 25.000 hits per month and sometimes have 150 people on the site at the same time. Shared hosting cannot guarantee to handle these numbers unless the sites you are sharing with are all static and use up no resources. VPS plans also allow you to install any version of PHP you want to use.I am very happy with HostGator at the moment, their service is the best I have ever dealt with for that price range and they are very knowledgeable. I switched 4 hosts before settling with Hostgator and the new site has been live for over one month now and we have had 100% uptime. We did have about 45 minutes of downtime, luckily it was while i was building the site, but that was taken care of while I was on the chat support.I was a complete noob to VPS but HostGator has literally hundreds of How-To videos that help you set up anything you need (e.g. automatic website and server backups, fantastico products, etc...) and guide you through it step by step. As mentioned before, we are an established site with a loyal customer base and everything has been running WAAAAAY better than with our previous host, which charged twice as much, only had 9-5 service and if our site was down on the weekend, we were screwed! This happened way too often which is why we moved.Hostgator also set up my SSL for me within 24 hours and whenever I need help, which hasn't been the case since we launched the new site, they are immediately available. I'd advise not creating tickets for urgent issues though, go straight to Live Chat, 90% of the chat support people know exactly what they are doing, only had one woman that was a bit lost, but she passed me on to her team leader and he sorted me out in minutes.One thing to keep in mind though, is that as soon as you get over 300 people on your site at the same time, then VPS cannot handle the load and you will need a dedicated server, but since you are asking these questions, I highly doubt that will happen any time soon. I learned the hard way, as I sent out newsletters to our 6000 site members simultaneously and the resulting rush to the site cause the database to crash, but it rebooted within one minute and the site was very slow for about 30 minutes after until the initial rush to our site slowed down and we had about 450 on the site at the same time. Once the amount of people in the site reached 300, everything was smooth again and not slow anymore. I installed PHPList through fantastico and have started throttling the emails and the results have been much better as we send out the emails in batches of 2000 on 3 different days (by sending ~300 per hour for 7 hours) which is all done automagically through PHPList, just have to click go and it works in the background and emails you when it's done.But again, if you have a shop that gets more than 300 simultaneous visitors at any given time, you should let a professional design your site as I am not sure if PrestaShop would be suitable for such a high traffic site (EDIT: because the SQL queries would need to be further optimized to be scalable for larger sites and that is above my head.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tropical Dream Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 ok great! I have been hesitating between FatCow and HostGator and maybe 2 other hosts.I think I'll settle with them. I was impressed with the live chat support, the person seemed very honest. They make you feel they care for their customers. Also, the included dedicated IP and SSL seemed interesting.thank you for your experience. It's very hard to find honest quality reviews on the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sm3004 Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 Don't trust review sites as they are typically just sites that push you to certain hosts for affiliate cash, if you need more check out webhostingtalk.comI originally wanted to go with Linode, but they didn't have any servers open in California at the time I needed it, have heard nothing but excellent things about them...I did a butt load of research and have found that these are the best:Shared:medialayer.comrochenhost.comnearlyfreespeech.net --> I use them for my portfolios, they are by far the cheapest host you can findpair.comtigertech.nethostgator.comVPS:linode.comslicehost.comzerigo.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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