[thelist] PHP3 Vs. PHP4

[Jay Greenspan]

on 1/25/01 5:36 AM, Mr Sirio at mrsirio at mail.com wrote:

> Hello everybody!
> 
> I got to explain to my very ignorant boss why to host our new big php site
> on a php4 server instead of php3 one, i'm just a designer & i'm writing that
> for the programmer that's busy right now... the only  BIG difference that my
> boss can see it's the price (about 150$ for the php3 & 300$ for the php4
> (50Mb each).
> Now we want to put everything on the php4 one 'couse everybody's know that's
> faster but i need some kind of "stupid" motivation, something my boss can
> understand... becouse he don't give a F##k 'bout 15% faster for 100% more
> expensive...
> 
> Hope to have been clear, tnx so much by now!
> 
> Sirio Magnabosco, Italy

First off, it may pay to shop around a bit. There's no reason for that price
difference PHP3 and 4 come at the exact same price: $0. Given PHP 4's
greater stability and efficiency, it should be cheaper to use. I'd have my
suspicions about ISPs that haven't upgraded at this point.

Some other reasons:
    * Faster development time -- PHP 4 comes with a greater number of
functions that make tasks like dealing with arrays and strings even easier
than they were in PHP 3.

    * Greater flexiblity -- Let's say you want to access a credit-card
service. PHP 4 has three function sets for this: Cybercash, PayFlow Pro
(Verisign), and the cURL library, which can deal with HTTPS (or about any
other protocol you can think of). The architecture of PHP 4 makes it
extremely easy to add functions and APIs -- and ones are added regularly

    * Use of outside Libraries -- If you want to use outside classes or
Libraries, there's a good chance they're written in PHP 4. PEAR and most of
the stuff at phpclasses.upperdesign.com is for 4.

HTH

-j