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T
TjmSmith
Inspiring
August 17, 2011
Question

WEB Host Check

  • August 17, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 2316 views

A word to the wise; check out your ISP capabilities/support fully before moving on with CMS development.

Just learned the hard way.  I've had a static site on an ISP that provides PHP/MySQL service.  I built the DW5.5 CS 'test web site' (check_php) from the guide by David Powers and it worked fine on my local testing computer (XAMPP...).  I then tried to create the MySQL database on the live system and found they were using what apparently is an older version of 'everything'!!!.  Access to the entire site is provided via cPanel.  The create database function does not allow 'NON-alphanumeric' characters in the DB name (so much for my 'check_php' work!).

I then created a (test) database without the underscore and was able to upload the sample data (index & users) from Mr Powers examples; ok so far.  Then tried to add MySQL users:  Add New User is limited to seven characters (ok I guess but hampering from an end user point of view).  Did all the work to add the new user and on clicking 'create' it responds w/page 'success' but on return to the management screen the newly created user never appears

Sent 'comments/feedback' message yesterday; no response as of now.

I guess a new ISP is in order.

Tom

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Lon_Winters
Lon_Winters
Inspiring
August 17, 2011

Are you equating ISP with web hosting, or are you using the hosting that some ISPs provide as yo "personal web space". Your ISP is ther mainly just to provide you with Internet access, and any other of these features they may offer are bound to be sub-standard. If that's the case, then you need an account with a real web hosting provider who will have the latest versions of PHP and MySQL installed.

T
TjmSmithAuthor
Inspiring
August 18, 2011

Ooops!  No question about it, I was referring to my web hosting service (not my ISP).  I do know the difference but the frustration just got in the way.  Thanks for pointing it out though.

Anyone else having difficulty with the cPanel interface on their hosting service?

Tom

T
TjmSmithAuthor
Inspiring
August 26, 2011

Different hosts have different requirements for their connection strings, which to me is fine as long as they don't bury the information in some obscure knowledge base article or something. Have you viewed your database and table design in phpMyAdmin to see if the character limitation is merely the setting for that filed in the users table?


Rob, Lon, et al:

I agree that specific conventions for naming things via the web host's user interface are not/should not be a problem but as was said by Lon, 'so long as the instructions are not buried...'.

The response I received from the Host's 'help' to the question why? really didn't do much for satisfaction (as follows):

"Unfortunately upgrading from version like PHP 5.2 to 5.3 tends to break a lot of older software so we are unable at this time to upgrade all of our servers like that without breaking a lot of our clients sites. I believe the issue is not quite as severe with MySQL.

Cpanel on your server actually is a bit out of date and needs to be updated. At this time we are quite busy migrating many of our servers to a new data center so we don't want to update cPanel and cause anything to break in the middle of this. However, it should be updated likely within the next few weeks. the newer cPanel version makes the username and such much clearer."

But having gotten my answer to the connection problem, I can continue.  I just can't imagine when I would have guessed to add my cPanel login ID in front of the database name and user name in my connection string!!!

Regards

Tom

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