PHP with FastCGI Adds Security and Flexibly for Shared Hosting Users

SRI is converting all of there shared hosting users to FastCGI, which will be great news for all of our shared hosting clients. This will make your life easier as you install and use web apps like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress and also add another layer of security between you and the other users on our server.

You do not need to do anything for this to go into effect. Further we have seen no negative impact for clients who have had this change in our first “beta” round. We will simply email you in advance of when the change will happen, and then within a day it will be live for you.

What does this mean for you?

• Setting up new web apps like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress is easier.
• You won’t need to try and use the difficult FTP plugins these apps may or may not provide.
• Even if other websites get hacked all your files are out of there reach.
• You can restrict the permissions on your files more aggressively and still have a functional website.

For those of you interested in the technical details here is some information:

When PHP runs from FastCGI, your server runs the PHP interpreter like an Apache module, but with the rights of your user account. Usually, the PHP interpreter is either running as the user of the webserver (which is fast, but insecure, since everyone’s scripts run with the same rights), or as a CGI program, which is slow. Thus, FastCGI is a good solution for shared hosting.