In this post we outline steps that you can take to make sure you purchase the right hosting.

1. Get a Linux server that supports PHP and MySQL
   Most PHP, MySQL runs well on Unix server, Linux is popular operating system but you also have FreeBSD.
2. Check the requirement of the scripts you are going to run
   Almost all scripts will list the requirement somewhere. Sometime they are hidden somewhere under different names, for example
   WordPress: Hosting WordPress
   phpBB: Documentation:Requirements
   CMS Made Simple: User Handbook/Installation/Requirements
3. Ask the web hosting company for a phpinfo output
   Most competent webhost will respond to this. The output looks something like this:
   
4. Ask the webhosting company directly
   Alternative, if you don’t want to deal with the technical mumbo jumbo, ask the hosting company directly.
   We recommend though that you try it yourself. It is a good learning process anyway.

Once you have done the above steps, you need to know what to look for. Let’s take the example from the WordPress requirements.

PHP version
This is displayed right on top, for example 5.2.5. WordPress says it need PHP version 4.2 or greater, so we are good (5.2.5 is greated than 4.2).

MySQL
On the phpinfo output page search for “Client API version” (Ctrl+F on IE and Firefox). Check the number give against WordPress requirement which is MySQL version 4.0 or greater.

Apache mod_rewrite
This is optional but is useful for SEO friendly URL and such. So if you need that, check for it. Do a search on the page for “mod_rewrite“. It should appears under the Apache section.

And you are good to go!

For other scripts, there may be other requirements such as safe_mode, magic_quotes_gpc, gd, iconv, mbstring. Simply do a search on the page for them and see the corresponding details that follows.

Most of the time they have very self-explanatory values like “on”, “off”. Sometime the presence or absence of the word suggest it is there or not.

Just follow these few steps and you can easily determine if you can your script on the host.

If you have question about whether your host can run a script, send us a note we can help you take a look.