Hosting and infrastructure

Where your site runs

Web hostingWeb hosting is the service that keeps your website's files on a computer that is always online, so visitors can open your site at any time. comes in different shapes. On shared hostingShared hosting is a hosting plan where many websites share one computer. It is cheap and simple, but your host decides which PHP versions you can use. many sites share one server and the provider decides which PHP versions you can pick, usually in a hosting control panelA hosting control panel, such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin, is the web page where you manage your domain, email, databases and PHP version. such as cPanel or Plesk. On a VPSA VPS (virtual private server) is your own virtual computer inside a bigger shared machine. You get more control than on shared hosting, and more to manage. you get a virtual server of your own, and someone has to keep its software up to date. Underneath, a web serverA web server is the program, such as Apache, Nginx or LiteSpeed, that answers when a visitor opens your site and sends back the page and files. such as Apache, Nginx or LiteSpeed receives every request, and a Linux distributionA Linux distribution, such as Debian or Ubuntu, is a ready-made package of the operating system many servers run. It often decides which PHP version you get. such as Debian or Ubuntu often supplies its own PHP packages.

Changing things safely

Updates go wrong less often when you can try them first. A staging environmentA staging environment is a private copy of your website where you try updates first, so any mistakes happen there and not on the live site. is a private copy of your site for exactly that. Before any change, a fresh backupA backup is a separate copy of your website's files and database, so you can bring the site back after a mistake, a hack or a failed update. of files and database gives you something to return to, and a planned rollbackA rollback means going back to the last version of your website that worked, after an update has gone wrong. is the route back if the live site misbehaves. When something does break, the error logAn error log is a file where your website's software writes down what went wrong, with the time and place. It is the first thing to check when a site breaks. usually tells you the file and line within minutes.

Questions to ask your host

A few questions save a lot of guessing. Which PHP versions can you choose, and until when will the current ones be offered? Who installs security fixes for PHP and the server, you or the provider? Is there a staging option, and how far back do the backups go? The answers tell you how much of the upgrade work sits with your host and how much lands on your plate.

Getting help

Moving to a newer PHP version on the same host is the work of our PHP upgrade service, including a staging test and a rollback plan. If your current host cannot offer a supported PHP version, or you want to leave a server nobody maintains, our PHP migration service moves the site to a modern stack and host. And when the site is down right now, emergency help comes first. Think of a website down as the trigger.