Should I move to another host

[a_duncan]

Hi

I currently use Dreamhost for a number of my domains. I have always found their service great. I have gone to use it for my OSCMax ecommerce site and asked support if they were compatible and received the following response:-

What you will need for osCmax are those PHP Modules installed (not just the libraries). These modules are not all installed on DreamHost by default in our PHP installation (though the libraries are here). The sad truth is that, per the system requirements listed at http://www.oscmax.com/book/oscmax_installation_manual, you will only be able to run osCmax here if you compile your own PHP for use with your domain, with the required modules, and using the specified settings in php.ini.

There are two of these settings that are *not* the default/recommended settings for PHP5.
Register_Globals is now off by default in modern PHP installations (and will vanish entirely and not even be able to be set "ON" in PHP6). Also register_long_arrays are off by default in our standard PHP45 installation.

There is a basic guide to installing PHP5 on our wiki, at http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Installing_PHP5, but you will need to customize that using the PHP manual at php.net to compile with the modules you require, and them change the php.ini settings to facilitate osCmax operation.

My query is:-
* is it time to move to another host; or
* if I hired someone with expertise in this area can this be overcome. I would prefer to save the $30 per month (by not moving) but not at the expense of causing me a lot of headache and having a site that wouldn't work properly.

Thanks for any help or guidance that can be provided.

[michael_s]

osCmax will run fine on default dreamhost servers, as long as you install a current version of osCmax. All current versions (2.0.4 Stable and newer) work fine with default php5 default settings.

The documentation they referred to is outdated and will be removed. The current documentation is here: http://wiki.oscdox.com

and requirements and installation instructions are here:
http://wiki.oscdox.com/introduction

http://wiki.oscdox.com/installation

The only module that you may need that is not available from dreamhost is curl+ssl, but I cannot be sure, as I have never used them. And that is only required if you use UPS/USPS (they use php curl functions) and a couple of the payment modules (authorize.net and linkpoint). If you are not using those modules, you can get by without the php curl module.