I have decided that I am no longer going to be coding using only php4 functions. The time is past due where it is okay for web hosting companies to use outdated software. If they don’t offer php5 then use a hosting company that will. I use dream host and they give you the option of php4 or php5 when you setup a new site. While coding my wordpress plugins I always keep in mind that there will be people downloading and running them with php4 so I limit myself to php4. From now on I am going to include php5 functions and put system requirements by the download link. I think if more developers would do this you would see more and more hosting companies upgrading their systems. I mean come on. It’s not like php isn’t free!!

If your hosting company doesn’t offer php5 I would write them and say that you are being forced to choose another hosting company and the reason is because you don’t offer php5. If they got enough emails and support tickets they would install it. I recently changed hosting companies so that I would have access to more features like SVN, CVS, PHP5 among others and I was dreading moving the multiple sites and databases I had hosted with another company thinking that things wouldn’t transition smoothly and I would have sites down for long stretches of time. To my surprise it actually wet pretty smoothly and only took me a day. I have all my site in a cvs repository that makes development so much easier. I also have all my plugins in SVN and that will help keep track of versions.

I was thinking about using trac, a python script that adds a wiki and bug report to you svn repository but I don’t know. I don’t code in python so I wouldn’t be able to mess with anything.  Maybe there is a similar php script. I have noticed that it becomes a pain to manage bug reports using a forum, but it will do for now.

Let me know what you think about coding for php5!