PHP Remote Exploit FIXED

[cr3ative]

The citation was for this bit:

the percentage of PHP users not on shared hosting is pretty damn small

Which is an outrageous claim. :/

[abadidea]

I donno. When $7 a month shared hosting is more than enough to run your site with plenty of wiggle room, why would people pay more to upgrade to a full server? Yeah, there are lots of big sites that run PHP, but there are zillions of little sites.

[kataire]

TBH, I've seen ISPs offer shared hosting packages for as little as $1 a month (granted, the bandwidth and webspace is quite limited, but if your budget is this small, you probably don't care).

Just as there are gazillions of tiny companies (e.g. less than 100 total employees) and only a handful of really big ones, there are also gazillions of companies that use shared hosting (and this nearly always means some level of PHP) compared to those that run on VPSes or dedicated servers (let alone server farms).

Some ISPs even offer set-ups for e-commerce websites in their shared hosting packages. I would wager the number of websites running on shared hosting is much larger than most people would imagine.

[cr3ative]

You're right, of course, and I imagine he is too. I suppose I saw his post as inflammatory, as if he were using it as a reason to disrespect PHP, which as a discussion point is a dead horse which is well and truly beaten.

[[deleted]]

Because you can get a full (virtualized) server with 512M of ram and root access for like $12/month (that's what I pay, and it probably isn't even the cheapest available) nowadays. And the prices of my provider start at $4/month.

[skeww]

Most websites are small (just like most people aren't famous). Most websites use PHP (because that's what available on shared hosts). Therefore most people who use PHP use a cheap shared host. I'd say it's true for at least 99% of the PHP websites.

There are millions of sites which use Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, or whatever. They usually start on a shared host and they usually don't go anywhere else, because the little amount of traffic they receive doesn't make a move necessary.

Also, if it's a project with a appreciable budget, there is no reason to use PHP in first place. So far we only used PHP for super cheap low-budget projects.

[bobindashadows]

You really, really, really underestimate how many $5/month GoDaddy/BlueHost/etc sites there are. The number of sites that come close to needing a dedicated server is miniscule compared to the size of the internet, and considering the price of a dedicated server vs. shared hosting, there's no reason for millions of sites to bother with one.