System Requirements for current 1.5 candidate

[MichaelChristopher]

:( Well, I have a wonderful new EE 1.5RC site up and running, but I just got some bad news from my hosting provider. After a couple weeks of escalating my support request, they finally came back with the answer that, nope, Interland won't support ImageMagick. So I won't be able to add any new images after the initial site upload---basically an ftp updump of the already-processed images. I've been with Interland since 1997 or so (it was ICOM way back then), but if they can't support this incredible software of Pekka's, then I've gotta find a new hosting provider.

As I narrow my serach, it would be really helpful to have the necessaries all in a row. What must I be looking for in the way of minimum:

+ MySql version

+ PHP version

+ Program support (ImageMagick, GD, etc.?)

+ Anything else I haven't thought of?

I'll bet this would be useful to many others, too, especially after the EE 1.5 official release.

[Pekka]

MysQL version: minimum 3.23 , 4. recommended (with query cache on). MySQL 4.1 is not fully tested yet.

PHP version: minimum 4.06 (next EE has minimum 4.10). I do recommend to use absolutely the latest PHP version because of security and bugfixes they do. It is good if PHP has EXIF, GD2, FTP and GZIP support installed (these belong to basic PHP installation so usually they are). PHP 5 will work with EE 1.5RC4 if it has php.ini setting "register_long_arrays = On".

Graphics libraries: EE 1.5RC4 supports Imagemagick (5 or 6), GD2. Imagick PEAR is supported but as Imagick project is practically dead there will be no bugfixes to that. Imagemagick is definitely the recommended graphics library for EE 1.5RC4 because it will do sharpening and watermarking. Next EE supports also NETPBM and USM sharpening for GD2, all with watermarking, so then all graphics libraries should be equally usable :) Imagemagick will always be the fastest method and it uses very little RAM. You will need to have PHP safe mode OFF for the site to run Imagemagick (or netpbm in the future). Safe mode exec directory is other possibility for those programs.

Server software can be virtually anything which supports PHP. I use Apache 1.3 or 2. I know EE works in IIS.

As EE uses ftp for many functions, the site should have one personal ftp account. Passive ftp transfer mode should be allowed.

Disk space: 10MB is enough for EE, plus what you need for images. Image serving can be distributed between many servers if needed so it is possible to have a setup where EE is on a very fast small server and all the images are on big file server(s). I have dropped "relative paths" from next EE so there is no need to have even thumbs on localhost any more then.

Bandwidth (transfer): this is the amount of data that goes in and out from your server during one month. Exceeding this costs usually $x/GB. Dedicated servers have usually 1000-1500GB/month which is plenty even for extremely large and popular galleries. Small servers (shared hosting accounts) have 10-50GB which may be tight if your site is popular. Then there are intermediate solutions like VPS (Virtuozzo) which have 50-200GB/month. Usually it is wise to avoid "unmetered" virtual servers because they tend to get really slow (slow pipe). Keeping file sizes small saves a lot of bandwidth.

If you want server provider recommendations see http://www.webhostingtalk.com/. See also http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26707&highlight=provider

[MichaelChristopher]

Thanks, Pekka. Based on these data I've gone with a shared hosting plan from ProNIC (http://www.pronicsolutions.com/). They seem to be a very feature-rich and well-liked provider with an easy upgrade path as our site grows.

[wcbert33]

I running EE 1.5RC on IPowerWeb.com with no problems.

Bill

[Pekka]

Does anyone use EE in Zeus server?