PHP Supports the Web
Although they do support several versions of PHP during a transistion period. It should be obvious that the PHP project cannot develop and support multiple branches of PHP. Nor should they have to do so because of the shared web hosting industries refusal to stay updated. Because of it's popularity it is important that PHP availability remain consistent throughout the web and hold it stable and secure.
Because of this a supported version roadmap is made and followed. Unfortunately the same roadmap is not followed by webhosts. Nor is there any initiative or association of web hosting that can provide a similar roadmap. The lack of guidance is the reason customers have jumped ship from host to host looking for the latest version of PHP to support their software. This situation has been the status quo for almost two decades.
PHP Grows the Web
Since PHP has been one of the top reasons for the growth of the number of web sites and a as a result the growth of the web hosting industry. It is only fair that it be used as the standard metric of hosting quality Moving forward website owners and web developers can be pro-active and use PHP as the measurement in a system of determining the quality of web hosting. Before getting placed in a bad spot that can only be solved by changing web hosts. It's a quality in, quality out rule of thumb. 
How Big is Shared Web Hosting?
Before we do a quality check of some of the better webhosts. Let's look at the industry as a whole and how it looks. Because the web hosting industry is so wide spread without associations or standards it is very difficult to get a grasp of the size and determine market shares.
After Collecting Data From Over 1,500 Hosting Companies and 54 Million Hosted Websites, Host Advice Reveals Fascinating Results About The Market Share of Top Hosting Sites Per Country
Using advanced comparison tools, new online service Host Advice today released the results of its “Global Web Hosting Market Share 2015” review. Until now, there has never been research done on the Web hosting industry because it required analyzing thousands of Web hosting plans from hundreds of Web hosting companies, and running a check on millions of websites.
Quality Check
Now that we have a list of market players let's check some of them for their level of quality. Adding other hosts not on the Host advice survey for comparison. No stars just straight floating levels -1 to 4 . The top level being for developers. Hosts are penalized for any zero value. Meaning that if it is set as the default on their control panel or if it is available in the control panel they recieve a down tick. An example being a host that has PHP 5.5 as a default but allows PHP 5.2 would get a score of 1. Host are also penalized for being in consistent. A host which has 5.5 as their highest default level but advertises PHP7 without PHP5.6 is penalized and remains at the defaulted PHP 5.5 level 2. An example is Redyhost which could have gotten the top level if not for their allowance of PHP 5.3.
| Branch | Initial Release | Active Support Until | Security Support Until | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.4 | 1 Mar 2012 | 3 years, 5 months ago | 14 Sep 2014 | 11 months ago | 14 Sep 2015 | in 27 days |
| 5.5 | 20 Jun 2013 | 2 years, 1 month ago | 10 Jul 2015 | 1 month ago | 10 Jul 2016 | in 10 months |
| 5.6 | 28 Aug 2014 | 11 months ago | 28 Aug 2016 | in 1 year | 28 Aug 2017 | in 2 years |
| Grade | PHP version | Points | details |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 5.6.x | 1 | optimal |
| 2 | 5.5.x | 1 | acceptable |
| 1 | 5.4.x | 0 | low ending security support in 1 month |
| 0 | 7 | 1 | beta for developers |
| 0 | 5.3 > | -1 | unusable |
| -1 | unknown | -2 | untrustworthy |
| Host | Level | Points | details |
|---|---|---|---|
| a2 hosting | 3 | 2 | optimal + |
| InMotion | 3 | 1 | optimal |
| Web Hosting Hub | 3 | 1 | optimal |
Level 3
SiteGround – PHP Version 5.6.8Namecheap – PHP Version 5.6
Redy host-- PHP version 7 and 5.6 but allows 5.3 and earlier
A small Orange -- PHP Version 5.6 to 5.4
Level 2
Arvixe -- PHP Version 5.5
HostGator – PHP Version 5.5
WP Engine – PHP Version 5.5
GoDaddy – PHP Version 5.5
Level 1
Bluehost – PHP Version 5.4
Later other indicators can be added such as is the PHP version upfront and visible in the advertising? Are they supporting PHP across the board in all packages or are they holding customers hostage in the lower tiers giving them unsupported PHP until they upgrade? This despicable practice has become all too common and a host gets two minus ticks for it.
Though the Content Connection Kit runs fine on PHP version 5.4 and above it will always be developed on and updated to the latest version. This is one of the greatest pluses for having small code base , one that can be modified and refactored in days not months or years. Ongoing evolution of web applications using the latest PHP features requires web hosting support that is up to date. We can all make sure this happens by being critical of hosting that does not meet with the PHP quality standard.
Follow me on twitter if you are interested in being part of an initiative that uses PHP as the eminent metric for determining the quality of Shared Web Hosting across the Web Hosting industry?
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