HostGator.com – How To Enable PHP5 On Your Account

I have just got off HostGator‘s live chat support. I gotta say I was quite surprised by the fact that they provide such a quick and efficient service. I spoke with Matthew S. from HostGator’s technical support team, he was very kind and professional.

I asked him about having PHP5 enabled on my account instead of PHP4. He told me that all servers would be upgraded to PHP5 by the end of March but that in the meantime, it’s possible to enable it per directory.

So if you’re signing up for a new HostGator account or if you already have one, here’s how to enable PHP5: simply edit the .htaccess file at the root of your website and add the following line:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 php

This way all your PHP scripts will be processed by the PHP5 engine.

Note: the .htaccess file is an hidden file. If you don’t see it, it is either because you must enable display of hidden files in your FTP client or that it simply doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, create one locally and upload it to your web server through FTP.