Tag Archive Cheap VPS

What is a Dedicated Server?

What is a Dedicated Server?

What is a Dedicated Server?

What is a dedicated server? Glad you asked! This page outlines what a dedicated server is, and explains the benefits of dedicated server hosting over shared hosting.

Dedicated server hosting refers to a type of web hosting plan where you are allocated a whole server to yourself. Therefore, a “dedicated server” refers to the “dedicated” server that you rent (or purchase) in order to host your website (or websites).

Dedicated server hosting can give you more control over your website. It can also help to ensure that other customers’ websites don’t impact on your website. Using dedicated servers is much more expensive than shared hosting, but if your site receives lots of traffic or you have other requirements (such as extra security requirements), dedicated server hosting could be for you.

With dedicated server hosting, you are able to log in to your dedicated server just as you would log in to your own computer. Once logged in, you can install and configure software as you wish.

Dedicated Server with Managed Hosting

Some dedicated server hosting plans are fully managed, meaning that your web hosting company performs regular administration duties, such as initial server setup, patching, anti-virus, security scanning, monitoring, and more.

Other dedicated server plans are self managed – you are responsible for the server setup, patching, anti-virus, etc

As you might expect, fully managed plans can be much more expensive than a self-hosted option. However, unless you have the time and inclination to look after your server 24/7, you might be better off looking for some sort of managed hosting plan.

Some dedicated server hosting plans are managed by default, others are self managed with an optional “service plan”, meaning, you pay extra for your web host to manage your server. Some of these self managed plans have various “add ons” that you can pick and choose. For example, you could add on a backup plan, a server maintenance plan, a security scanning service, etc. With these options, your web hosting company will perform these duties as outlined on a regular basis (for example, weekly or monthly) or perhaps on a one-off basis as required by yourself.

Example of Dedicated Server Hosting

To get a better idea of what’s included with dedicated server hosting, check out these dedicated servers at our partner site, ZappyHost.

What is a Dedicated Server – Another Definition

The term “dedicated server” can also mean a single computer within a network that is reserved for a specific purpose. For example, within a network, you could have a computer dedicated to printer resources, another computer dedicated to Internet connections, another computer serving as a firewall, etc. These computers would all be dedicated servers, as the whole computer is allocated for a specific task within the network.

What is a Virtual Dedicated Server?

A virtual dedicated server is a variation on the dedicated server concept. Instead of hiring the whole physical server, you hire a virtual server.

A virtual dedicated server is also referred to as a virtual private server (VPS). To learn more about VPS hosting, see What is VPS Hosting?.

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol that is used to log into the system via a secure channel. With the help of SSH, you can safely exchange data between two devices. For more detailed information, visit here.

Enabling SSH access allows for:

  • Remote hosting control
  • The ability to add, remove, edit, backup and restore hosting files and directories
  • The easy import and export of your database
  • An established connection between 2 different servers

However, there are some downsides with enabling SSH:

  • More difficult to use than a web interface
  • Increased security risks

 

The Manage Shell plugin provided by Namecheap allows you to enable or disable SSH access for your respective hosting accounts with just a few clicks.

For cPanel Basic Theme:

Firstly, locate the Manage Shell plugin from your cPanel:
cPanel >> the Exclusive for Namecheap Customers section >> Manage Shell:

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

By default, SSH access is disabled for hosting accounts.

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

There are 3 options related to enabling SSH keys:

  • Managing SSH keys
  • Generating a new key
  • Importing a key

All these options will take you to the SSH Access menu in your cPanel. Detailed instructions can be found in this guide.

To enable SSH, turn the toggle button on. After it has been enabled, you will then see how you can manage your SSH.

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

Feel free to explore more about SSH clients here.

For cPanel Retro Theme:

Firstly, locate the Manage Shell plugin from your cPanel:
cPanel >> the Exclusive for Namecheap Customers section >> Manage Shell:

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

By default, SSH access is disabled for hosting accounts.

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

There are 3 options related to enabling SSH keys:

  • Managing SSH keys
  • Generating a new key
  • Importing a key

All these options will take you to the SSH Access menu in your cPanel. Detailed instructions can be found in this guide.

To enable SSH, turn the toggle button on. After it has been enabled, you will then see how you can manage your SSH.

How to use Manage Shell in cPanel - Cheap VPS

Feel free to explore more about SSH clients here.

What is the difference between shared hosting and VPS?

What is the difference between shared hosting and VPS?

What is the difference between shared hosting and VPS?
It is the same difference as between a dedicated server and usual shared hosting.

With a VPS, you receive all the power of dedicated hosting with the ability to have your own set of services and customizable disk space. With shared hosting, you have limited administrative access and can’t customize software configurations, while with a VPS you can perform any actions from your control panel and don’t need to contact technical support with every single request.

Why should I choose VPS hosting?

Why should I choose VPS hosting?Why should I choose VPS hosting?

Virtual Private Server is the right choice for developers, webmasters, resellers and simply for those who run resource-intensive websites. We use KVM and VMware technologies for virtualization, that is why each VPS performs and executes exactly like an independent physical machine and therefore offers security and flexibility for your sites, independence from neighbors, full control over your hosting environment and power of a dedicated server at an affordable price. KVM delivers 133% increase in disk speed performance comparing to XEN technology. Both KVM and VMware VPSs has got their own customers, and we respect all those customers.

 

What is a VPS?

What is a VPS?

What is a VPS?

With a VPS, you open a world of possibilities that would not be possible on shared hosting because of restrictions.

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. This refers to the partitioning of a physical server into multiple servers. In effect, each one acts just like a dedicated server, you get all the features of a dedicated server but at a lower price. Each VPS has its own operating system, and each can be rebooted separately. These operating systems each receive a specific share of the resources of the physical server, no more and no less, they are isolated from each other so that one cannot interfere with another. If one VPS experiences problems or tries to use too much memory or CPU resources, it has no effect on the others.

There are many advantages to selecting a VPS, it costs less than a fully dedicated server and provides a great deal of freedom and flexibility over the limitations and restrictions of shared hosting. You are limited only by the capabilities of the VPS, so select one powerful enough to meet your needs. You can always upgrade later if you decide it becomes necessary.

As for virtualization technologies we offer KVM VPS servers.

Since you are supposed to manage your VPS yourself, we recommend you have a good understanding of Linux commands and are familiar with the WHM/cPanel control panel. You can get a VPS without WHM/cPanel, but in this case, you would need to have very advanced knowledge of Linux.

If you don’t feel you have the technical expertise necessary to manage your own VPS, there is no need to let that stop you – you can select full management for an additional fee.

You won’t have root access, and it will act much like a shared hosting plan, but you will still make the decisions.

cPanel is required if you choose full management for a VPS.

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

This article will take you through the process of moving your WordPress website from the subfolderyourdomain.com/wp to the domain root – yourdomain.com:

 

NOTE: Before proceeding with any changes, make sure that you generate a full backup of your website. If you’ve created your site using Softaculous script installer, feel free to refer to this guide as well (step #4 – Backup software).

for cPanel paper_lantern theme:
Re-installation
Redirection
File migration and Database update

 

Re-installation

If you just installed your website and have done no or little development, WordPress re-installation will be the easiest way out.

You just need to go back to cPanel > Exclusive for Namecheap Customers section > Softaculous Apps Installer menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
Create a new one, make sure the In Directory field is empty and proceed with the installation:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Do not forget to uninstall /subfolder website by hitting the red cross in All Installations menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

 

Redirection

If the website is pretty much done and re-installation is not acceptable, you can set up a hidden redirect – the installation will remain in the subfolder, but your website homepage will be yourdomain.com.

Take into account that this redirect will make /subfolder disappear only on the homepage, links will still have it – e.g., yourdomain.com/subfolder/contactus.

If it sounds alright to you, add the following redirect to .htaccess file in the domain web root (replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain name and subfolder with your subfolder):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?yourdomain.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(/|\.[^/]*)$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?yourdomain.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subfolder/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subfolder/$1 

1. Navigate to Files section > File Manager:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

2. Move to the root folder for your WordPress installation – public_html in case it is the main domain for your account.

Once there, make sure that Show Hidden files (dotfiles) option is enabled in Settings menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

3. Locate .htaccess file, right-click > Edit:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

4. If there is no .htaccess file located in your File manager, feel free to create a new one using File option:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

You are ready to add the redirect rule and save it.

File migration and Database update

If the option above does not work for you, and you would like to make sure there is no /subfolder on your website, you can go this way.

NOTE: We highly recommend to back up website files and the database before proceeding.

1. File migration

Go to your website folder using FTP or File Manager:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Select All files > Move them to the domain document root (in our example, from public_html/wp_subfolderto public_html):

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Once done, go back to the domain document root to make sure all files have been moved:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

2. Database update

You can update old URL references with the new ones in the database either using search and replace scripts or using text editors. Below we provide the guidelines using the latter:

1. To begin with, you will need to locate the database associated with your website. Right-click on the file > View or Edit option:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

You will see the database name in this line:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

3. The next steps is to download the backup of the database. It can be done in your cPanel > Files section > Backup menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder

4. Unzip the downloaded file. Now you can open .sql file with some text editor and update all the URL references.

Hit Ctrl + F and select Replace option. Fill out the corresponding fields, Find – your old domain, Replace – your new domain) and hit Replace All:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

5. Once done, you should get the output like this:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Make sure that you save the changes.

6. Now you can upload the updated database to your cPanel account. To be on the safe side, we suggest creating a new database (instead of dropping the existing one) and connect it to your WordPress side.

To do so, move to Databases section > MySQL Databases menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

7. Follow the steps below to create a new database and user for it:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Keep these details, you will need to use them a bit later.

8. After that you can upload the database using phpMyAdmin menu in Databases section:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

9. Select the newly created database from the list on the left and use switch to Import tab. There you will need to use Browse option to pick up the database .sql file from your local device:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

NOTE: If your database is more than 50Mb, import the database following the steps in this guide.

10. Once done, you will need to update wp-config.php file in your installation root folder:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

The fields to be changed are:

define ‘DB_NAME’ line – the name of the new database you’ve created in MySQL Databases menu.
define ‘DB_USER’ line – the name of the new user you you’ve created in MySQL Databases menu.
define ‘DB_PASSWORD’ line – the new password you’ve set for database user in MySQL Databases menu.

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Save the changes and feel free to check your website.

If everything is working fine, you may delete the old database you used for the website.

11. It is also advised to re-generate the permalinks to make sure they have the new URL. You can do it in your WordPress dashboard in Settings menu > Permalinks.

So if you had Post name, you need to switch it to Plain, for instance, save the changes and then revert everything back:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

 

for cPanel x3 theme:

Re-installation
Redirection
File migration and Database update

Re-installation

If you just installed your website and have done no or little development, WordPress re-installation will be the easiest way out.

You just need to go back to cPanel > Software/Services section > Softaculous > WordPress, make sure the In Directory field is empty and proceed with the installation.

Do not forget to uninstall the /wp website in Softaculous once done:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

 

Redirection

If the website is pretty much done and re-installation is not acceptable, you can set up a hidden redirect – the installation will remain in the /wp subfolder, but your website homepage will be yourdomain.com.

Take into account that this redirect will make /wp disappear only on the homepage, links will still have it – e.g., yourdomain.com/wp/contactus.

If it sounds alright to you, add the following redirect to the .htaccess file in the domain web root (replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain name and wp with your subfolder)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?yourdomain.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(/|\.[^/]*)$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?yourdomain.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /wp/$1 

File migration and Database update

If the variants above do not work for you, and you would like to make sure there is no /wp on your website, you can go with this option.

We highly recommend to back up website files and the database before proceeding.

1. File migration

Go to your website folder using FTP or File Manager:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

Select All files > Move them to the domain document root (in our example, from public_html/wp to public_html):

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
How to move WordPress from a subfolder
Once done, go back to the domain document root to make sure all files have been moved:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
2. Database update

You can update old URL references with the new ones in the database either using search and replace scripts or using text editors.

Below we provide the guidelines using the latter.

  • Check what database is used for your WordPress website. You can check it in the wp-config.php file located in the WordPress installation folder:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • Go to cPanel > Databases section > phpMyAdmin.

 

  • Select the database in question and click on Export > Go:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • The database will be downloaded to your computer. Now you need to open it and update all yourdomain.com/wp references with yourdomain.com.Once opened, click Ctrl+F and choose the tab Replace. Fill out the fields below correspondingly > Replace All:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • Once done, the prompt below will display the result:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • Save the updated database and exit the application.
  • Now go back to cPanel > Databases section > phpMyAdmin and select your database.
  • Check all tables using the option below and select Drop from the drop-down menu:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • On the next page, confirm the actions by clicking Yes:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • Once the old tables are dropped, go back and select the database > Import:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • Choose the updated database from your computer files to upload > Go:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

  • You will see a green status bar – this will indicate that the database has been successfully imported. On your right, a database tables tree will appear:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder
Go back to your website and refresh the page to check the results:

How to move WordPress from a subfolder

 

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

Once you order hosting service, you can start creating your own website. Using Softaculous automatic app installer you can install WordPress in a few clicks.

Below you can find step-by-step guidelines covering the process:

1. Log into your cPanel.
2. Navigate to Exclusive for Namecheap customers section > Softaculous Apps Installer menu:

How to install WordPress using Softaculous
3. On the homepage, click on the WordPress icon:

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

4. Switch to the Install tab to proceed:

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

5. On the next page you will need to fill out the details of your WordPress installation.

  • Choose the domain you wish to install WordPress for
  • In the In Directory field you can specify the root folder for WordPress installation. By default, this field is empty, and it allows installing WordPress on yourdomain.com directly. If you wish to install it to a subfolder, like yourdomain.com/blog, simply type “blog” in this field.
  • Database Name can be left default.
  • Table Prefix can also be left default wp_; however, due to security reasons it is better to change it, e.g., to ncwpsite_ .
  • The Site Settings section should be filled out accordingly to your needs, though you can change it anytime later if required.

Make sure you set up secure and hard-to guess details in the Admin Account section:

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

6. When ready, scroll down and hit Install.
In a few moments you will see the message that WordPress has been successfully installed:

How to install WordPress using Softaculous

 

You can now go ahead and log into your WordPress Dashboard to start working on your website.

 

 

How to check PHP version and configuration

How to check PHP version and configuration

There are two ways to check PHP version set for the account. By default, we have PHP 5.6 set on our shared servers.
To check what PHP version is selected for your account go to cPanel Software section > Select PHP version menu:

How to check PHP version and configuration
You will see the current PHP version above PHP extensions:

How to check PHP version and configurationAnother way to check PHP version is PHPinfo() function, commonly used to check the current state of PHP configuration. It can also be used for debugging purposes as it contains all EGPCS (Environment, GET, POST, Cookie, Server) data.

for cPanel Basic theme:

1. Log into your cPanel account, go to Files section > File Manager menu:

How to check PHP version and configuration

2. Navigate to public_html directory, click on New File and create a phpinfo.php file:

How to check PHP version and configuration

How to check PHP version and configuration

3. Find the newly created file in the list and click on Code Editor:

How to check PHP version and configuration

4. Add the lines of the code provided below to the file and click on Save Changes:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

How to check PHP version and configuration

5. To see the detailed information about PHP configuration of your account, open http://yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php link in your browser, replacing yourdomain.com with your main domain name.

NOTE: For security reasons, do not forget to delete the file once you check all the necessary information.

for cPanel Retro theme:

1. Log into your cPanel account, go to the section Files File Manager menu:

How to check PHP version and configuration

2. Navigate to the public_html directory, click on New File and create a phpinfo.php file:

How to check PHP version and configuration

3.Find the newly created file in the list and click on Code Editor:

How to check PHP version and configuration

4. Add the lines of the code provided below to the file and click on Save Changes:


<?php
phpinfo();
?> 

How to check PHP version and configuration

5. To see the detailed information about PHP configuration of your account, open http://yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php link in your browser, replacing yourdomain.com with your main domain name.

NOTE: 
For security reasons, do not forget to delete the file once you check all the necessary information.

That’s it!

PHP modules and extensions on shared hosting servers

PHP modules and extensions on shared hosting servers

How to change PHP version on shared servers

PHP is an open-source scripting language that is mainly used to create dynamic web pages. Its code can be embedded into HTML code which simplifies web page creation. A site designer can ‘jump’ between PHP and HTML without inserting tons of codes to output HTML. The syntax of the language was ‘borrowed’ from C, Java and Perl, though some new features were added. PHP is supported by most of web servers and operating systems.

PHP extensions are used for different purposes with only a few exceptions: Every function in PHP is included into one extension or another. A major number of these extensions are a part of standard extensions – over 400 of them. There is also a PECL repository which offers over 100 additional modules.

Here are the main reasons to use PHP modules/extensions:

  • to extend PHP functionality for a very particular usage (mathematics, statistics, geometry, etc.)
  • to have a higher performance and efficiency compared to a pure PHP implementation
  • to leverage the swiftness obtained from programming in another previously grasped language

You can check the PHP extensions and modules available on our Shared servers in the table below.

If you wish to check the PHP version and PHP extensions enabled for your account, follow this guide for more details. In case some necessary PHP extension or module from the table above is not enabled, feel free to contact our support team via Helpdesk to assist you with this question.

The PHP version (along with PHP extensions) can be changed in a different way depending on the server your account is hosted on:

  • If you have either a Shared (Stellar, Stellar Plus or old ValueProfessionalUltimate plan) or Resellerhosting plan, you may use the PHP selector menu in cPanel.
  • If you have a Stellar Business (or old Business SSD) hosting plan, you may use the PHP tweaks menu in cPanel.

Here is a brief explanation of each PHP module and extension:

apm: alternative PHP Monitor is used to collect error events and statistics and send them to one of its drivers.

ares: binding for the ares (MIT) or c-ares (CURL) library.

bcmath: for arbitrary precision mathematics, PHP offers Binary Calculator which supports numbers of any size and precision, represented as strings.

bcompiler: bcompiler enables you to encode your scripts in phpbytecode, enabling you to protect the source code. bcompiler can be used in the following situations: to create an .exe file of a PHP-GTK application (in conjunction with other software); to create closed source libraries; to provide clients with the software expiry time (prior to payment); to deliver close source applications; to use on embedded systems, where disk space is a priority. bcompiler can improve performance by about 30% when used with uncompressed bytecodes only.

big_int: big_int library provides a set of functions for calculations with arbitrary length integers and bitsets.

bloomy: this extension implements a Bloom filter, which is a space-efficient probabilistic data structure used to test whether an element is a member of a set.

bitset: bitsets manipulation library

bz2: the bzip2 functions are used to transparently read and write bzip2 (.bz2) compressed files.

bz2_filter: bzip2 compress/decompress stream filter implementation. Performs inline compression/decompression using the bzip2 algorithm on any PHP I/O stream. The data produced by this filter, while compatible with the payload portion of a bz2 file, does not include headers or tailers for full bz2 file compatibility. To achieve this format, use the compress.bzip2:// fopen wrapper built directly into PHP.

calendar: the calendar extension presents a series of functions to simplify converting between different calendar formats.

core: this is a filter which makes it possible to run arbitrary PHP code to modify the attributes of an user.

crack: this module allows you to use the CrackLib library to test the ‘strength’ of a password. The ‘strength’ of a password is tested based on its length, use of upper and lower case as well as checked against the specified CrackLib dictionary. CrackLib will also give helpful diagnostic messages that will help ‘strengthen’ the password.

ctype: the functions provided by this extension check whether a character or string falls into a certain character class according to the current locale.

curl: PHP supports libcurl, a library created by Daniel Stenberg, that allows you to connect and communicate with different types of servers with different types of protocols. libcurl currently supports http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, dict, file, and ldap protocols. libcurl also supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP-form based upload, proxies, cookies, and user+password authentication.

date: the PHP date() function is used to format a date and/or time.

dba: these functions build the foundation for accessing Berkeley DB style databases.

dbase: these functions allow you to access records stored in dBase–format (dbf) databases.

dbx: the dbx module is a database abstraction layer (db ‘X’, where ‘X’ is a supported database). The dbx functions allow you to access all supported databases using a single calling convention.

dom: the DOM extension allows you to operate on XML documents through the DOM API with PHP 5.

doublemetaphone: the Double Metaphone algorithm by Lawrence Philips allows a word to be broken down into its phonemes.

eio: this extension provides asyncronous POSIX I/O by means of libeio C library.

enchant: PHP binding for the Enchant library. Enchant steps to provide uniformity and conformity on top of all spelling libraries and implement certain features that may be lacking in any individual provider library.

ereg: searches for a string specified by pattern, returning true if the pattern is found, and false if otherwise. The search is case-sensitive in regard to alphabetical characters.

exif: with the exif extension, you are able to work with image meta data. For example, you may use exif functions to read meta data of pictures taken from digital cameras by working with information stored in the headers of the JPEG and TIFF images.

fileinfo: the functions in this module try to guess the content type and encoding of a file by looking for certain magic byte sequences at specific positions within the file. While this is not a bulletproof approach, the used heuristics do a very good job.

filter: this extension filters data by either validating it or sanitizing it. This is especially useful when the data source contains unknown (or foreign) data, like user supplied input. For example, this data may come from an HTML form.

ftp: the functions in this extension implement client access to files servers speaking the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) as defined in RFC959. This extension is meant for detailed access to an FTP server providing a wide range of control to the executing script.

functional: a set of functional primitives for PHP.

gd: PHP is not limited to creating just HTML output. It can also be used to create and manipulate image files in a variety of different image formats, including GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, and XPM. Even more convenient, PHP can output image streams directly to a browser. For these purposes PHP is compiled with the GD library.

gender: gender PHP extension is a port of the gender.c program originally written by Joerg Michael. The main purpose is to find out the gender of firstnames. The name dictionary contains >40000 firstnames from 54 countries.

geoip: allows you to find the location of an IP address. City, State, Country, Longitude, Latitude, and other information as all, such as ISP and connection type can be obtained with the help of GeoIP.

gettext: gettext functions implement an NLS (Native Language Support) API which can be used to internationalize your PHP applications.

gnupg: this module allows you to interact with GnuPG – a complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880 (also known as PGP). GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for all kinds of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. Version 2 of GnuPG also provides support for S/MIME and Secure Shell (ssh). gnupg extension allows you to use the following functions: add a key for decryption/encryption, a key for signing; removes all keys which were set for decryption/encryption before, all keys which were set for signing before; decrypts/encrypts a given text; returns an array with information about all keys that matches the given pattern; toggle armored output; verifies a signed text.

haru: PECL/haru extension provides bindings to the libHaru library.

hash: message Digest (hash) engine. Allows direct or incremental processing of arbitrary length messages using a variety of hashing algorithms.

homeloader: is used for the user specific PEAR repositories.

hidef: allows definition of user defined constants in simple ini files, which are then processed like internal constants, without any of the usual performance penalties.

htscanner: htscanner extension gives the possibility to use .htaccess-like file to configure PHP per directory, just like apache’s htaccess.

huffman: huffman compression belongs to a family of algorithms with a variable codeword length. That means that individual symbols (characters in a text file for instance) are replaced by bit sequences that have a distinct length. So symbols that occur a lot in a file are given a short sequence while other that are used seldom get a longer bit sequence.

iconv: module contains an interface to iconv character set conversion facility. With this module, you can turn a string represented by a local character set into the one represented by another character set, which may be the Unicode character set.

idn: used for domain name conversion.

igbinary: is a drop in replacement for the standard php serializer. Instead of time and space consuming textual representation, igbinary stores php data structures in a compact binary form.

imagick: is a native php extension to create and modify images using the ImageMagick API. ImageMagick is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG–2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF.

imap: this function enables the possibility to operate with the IMAP protocol, as well as the NNTP, POP3 and local mailbox access methods.

inclued: traces through and dumps the hierarchy of file inclusions and class inheritance at runtime.

inotify: the inotify extension exposes the inotify functions inotify_init(), inotify_add_watch() and inotify_rm_watch(). inotify_init() returns a stream resource, usable with standard stream functions, like stream_select(), stream_set_blocking() and fclose(). inotify_read() replaces the C way of reading inotify events.

intl: internationalization extension (further is referred as Intl) is a wrapper for ICU library, enabling PHP programmers to perform UCA-conformant collation and date/time/number/currency formatting in their scripts.

ioncube_loader: is a PHP loader used to encrypt PHP files and speed up web pages that are being displayed.

ixed.5.x: is the name of the loaders which are required for encoded scripts protected by SourceGuardian. SourceGuardian 11 is the most advanced PHP Encoder on the market, complete with a ground-up rewrite, a powerful GUI and protection covering the latest version of PHP. You can encode your scripts using Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, all with a powerful GUI or using a command line interface. SourceGuardian PHP Encoder protects your PHP scripts by compiling the PHP source code into a bytecode format, followed by encryption layers.

jsmin: PHP extension for minifying JavaScript.

json: this extension implements JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data-interchange format. The decoding is handled by a parser based on the JSON_checker by Douglas Crockford.

ldap: is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol used to access ‘Directory Servers’. The Directory is a special kind of a database that holds information in a tree structure. The concept is similar to your hard disk directory structure, except that in this context, the root directory is ‘The world’ and the first level subdirectories are ‘countries’. Lower levels of the directory structure contain entries for companies, organizations or places, while yet lower still we find directory entries for people, and perhaps equipment or documents.

libevent: libevent is a library that provides a mechanism to execute a callback function when a specific event occurs on a file descriptor or after a timeout has been reached.

libxml: these functions/constants are available as of PHP 5.1.0, and the following core extensions rely on this libxml extension: DOM, libxml, SimpleXML, SOAP, WDDX, XSL, XML, XMLReader, XMLRPC and XMLWriter.

lzf: is a very fast compression algorithm, ideal for saving space with only slight speed cost. It can be optimized for speed or space at the time of compilation.

magickwand: this module enables PHP access to the ImageMagick MagickWand API. The MagickWand API is the recommended interface between the C programming language and the ImageMagick image processing libraries. Unlike the MagickCore C API, MagickWand uses only a few opaque types.

mailparse: mailparse is an extension for parsing and working with email messages. Mailparse is stream based, which means that it does not keep in–memory copies of the files it processes – so it is very resource efficient when dealing with large messages.

mbstring: mbstring provides multibyte specific string functions that help you deal with multibyte encodings in PHP. In addition to that, mbstring handles character encoding conversion between the possible encoding pairs.

mcrypt: this is an interface to the mcrypt library, which supports a wide variety of block algorithms such as DES, TripleDES, Blowfish (default), 3-WAY, SAFER-SK64, SAFER-SK128, TWOFISH, TEA, RC2 and GOST in CBC, OFB, CFB and ECB cipher modes.

mhash: this function is intended to work with mhash. Mhash can be used to create checksums, message digests, message authentication codes, and more. This is an interface to the mhash library. Mhash supports a wide variety of hash algorithms such as MD5, SHA1, GOST, and many others. For a complete list of supported hashes, refer to the constants page. The general rule is that you can access the hash algorithm from PHP with MHASH_hashname. For example, to access TIGER you use the PHP constant MHASH_TIGER.

mongo: this extension is deprecated; instead, the MongoDB extension should be used.

mongodb: the MongoDB PHP driver should work on nearly any system: Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, and Linux; little- and big-endian machines; 32- and 64-bit machines; PHP 5.3 through 5.6 (versions prior to 1.6 also support PHP 5.2). Unlike the mongo extension, this extension supports both PHP and HHVM and is developed atop the libmongoc and libbson libraries. It provides a minimal API for core driver functionality: commands, queries, writes, connection management, and BSON serialization. Userland PHP libraries that depend on this extension may provide higher level APIs, such as query builders, individual command helper methods, and GridFS. Application developers should consider using this extension in conjunction with the MongoDB PHP library, which implements the same higher level APIs found in MongoDB drivers for other languages. This separation of concerns allows the driver to focus on essential features for which an extension implementation is paramount for performance.

msgpack: this extension provides API for communicating with MessagePack serialization.

mssql: this function allows you to access MS SQL Server database. It has the following features: adds a parameter to a stored procedure or a remote stored procedure, close MS SQL Server connection, open MS SQL server connection, moves internal row pointer, executes a stored procedure on a MS SQL server database, fetch a result row as an associative array, a numeric array, or both, returns an associative array of the current row in the result, returns the next batch of records, get field information, fetch row as object, converts a 16 byte binary GUID to a string, initializes a stored procedure or a remote stored procedure, open persistent MS SQL connection etc.

mysql: these functions allow you to access MySQL database servers. This extension is deprecated as of PHP 5.5.0, and has been removed as of PHP 7.0.0. Instead, either the mysqli or PDO_MySQL extension should be used.

mysqli: the mysqli extension allows you to access the functionality provided by MySQL 4.1 and above.

mysqlnd: MySQL Native Driver is a replacement for the MySQL Client Library (libmysqlclient). The MySQL database extensions MySQL extension, mysqli and PDO MYSQL all communicate with the MySQL server. With MySQL Native Driver there is now an alternative, as the MySQL database extensions can be compiled to use MySQL Native Driver instead of the MySQL Client Library.

ncurses: (new curses) is a free software emulation of curses in System V Rel 4.0 (and above). It uses terminfo format, supports pads, colors, multiple highlights, form characters and function key mapping.

nd_mysql: MySQL native driver for PHP (mysqlnd) is a drop-in replacement for the MySQL Client Library (libmysql) for the PHP script language. The mysqlnd library is highly optimized for and tightly integrated into PHP. The MySQL Client Library cannot offer the same optimizations because it is a general-purpose client library. The mysqlnd library is using PHP internal C infrastructure for seamless integration into PHP. In addition, it is using PHP memory management, PHP Streams (I/O abstraction) and PHP string handling routines. The use of PHP memory management by mysqlnd allows, for example, memory savings by using read-only variables (copy on write) and makes mysqlnd apply to PHP memory limits

nd_mysqli: this extension is referred to as MySQL improved. It was developed to take advantage of the new features available in MySQL since version 4.1.3.

nd_pdo_mysql: MySQL Native Driver is a replacement for the MySQL Client Library (libmysqlclient). MySQL Native Driver is part of the official PHP sources as of PHP 5.3.0. The MySQL database extensions MySQL extension, mysqli and PDO MYSQL all communicate with the MySQL server. In the past, this was done by the extension using the services provided by the MySQL Client Library. The extensions were compiled against the MySQL Client Library in order to use its client-server protocol. With MySQL Native Driver there is now an alternative, as the MySQL database extensions can be compiled to use MySQL Native Driver instead of the MySQL Client Library. MySQL Native Driver is written in C as a PHP extension. Using the MySQL Native Driver offers a number of advantages over using the MySQL Client Library. The older MySQL Client Library was written by MySQL AB (now Oracle Corporation) and so was released under the MySQL license. This ultimately led to MySQL support being disabled by default in PHP. However, the MySQL Native Driver has been developed as part of the PHP project, and is therefore released under the PHP license. This removes licensing issues that have been problematic in the past. Also, in the past, you needed to build the MySQL database extensions against a copy of the MySQL Client Library. This typically meant you needed to have MySQL installed on a machine where you were building the PHP source code. Also, when your PHP application was running, the MySQL database extensions would call down to the MySQL Client library file at run time, so the file needed to be installed on your system. With MySQL Native Driver that is no longer the case as it is included as part of the standard distribution. So you do not need MySQL installed in order to build PHP or run PHP database applications. Because MySQL Native Driver is written as a PHP extension, it is tightly coupled to the workings of PHP. This leads to gains in efficiency, especially when it comes to memory usage, as the driver uses the PHP memory management system. It also supports the PHP memory limit. Using MySQL Native Driver leads to comparable or better performance than using MySQL Client Library, it always ensures the most efficient use of memory. One example of the memory efficiency is the fact that when using the MySQL Client Library, each row is stored in memory twice, whereas with the MySQL Native Driver each row is only stored once in memory.

oauth: this extension provides OAuth 1.0a consumer and provider bindings. OAuth is an authorization protocol built on top of HTTP which allows applications to securely access data without having to store usernames and passwords.

oci8: these functions allow you to access Oracle Database 12c, 11g, 10g, 9i and 8i. They support SQL and PL/SQL statements. Basic features include transaction control, binding of PHP variables to Oracle placeholders, and support for large object (LOB) types and collections. Oracle’s scalability features such as Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP) and result caching are also supported.

odbc: in addition to normal ODBC support, the Unified ODBC functions in PHP allow you to access several databases that have borrowed the semantics of the ODBC API to implement their own API.

openssl: this module uses the functions of OpenSSL for generation and verification of signatures and for sealing (encrypting) and opening (decrypting) data. OpenSSL offers many features that this module currently doesn’t support.

pcntl: process control support in PHP implements the Unix style of process creation, program execution, signal handling and process termination. PCNTL now uses ticks as the signal handle callback mechanism, which is much faster than the previous mechanism. This change follows the same semantics as using “user ticks”. You use the declare() statement to specify the locations in your program where callbacks are allowed to occur. This allows you to minimize the overhead of handling asynchronous events. In the past, compiling PHP with pcntl enabled would always incur this overhead, whether or not your script actually used pcntl. There is one adjustment that all pcntl scripts prior to PHP 4.3.0 must make for them to work which is to either to use declare() on a section where you wish to allow callbacks or to just enable it across the entire script using the new global syntax of declare().

pcre: the PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular expression pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl 5, with just a few differences.

pdf: the PDF functions in PHP can create PDF files using the PDFlib library from PDFlib GmbH

pdo: the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension defines a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP. Each database driver that implements the PDO interface can expose database–specific features as regular extension functions.

pdo_dblib: is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase databases through the FreeTDS library.

pdo_firebird: a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to Firebird database.

pdo_mysql: is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to MySQL 3.x, 4.x and 5.x databases. PDO_MYSQL will take advantage of native prepared statement support present in MySQL 4.1 and higher.

pdo_odbc: connecting to ODBC or DB2 databases

pdo_pgsql: this extension provides an PostgreSQL driver for PDO.

pdo_sqlite: PDO_SQLITE is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access to SQLite 3 databases.

pgsql: PostgreSQL database is an Open Source product. Postgres, developed originally in the UC Berkeley Computer Science Department, pioneered many of the object-relational concepts now becoming available in some commercial databases.

phalcon: phalcon is a high-performance web application framework for PHP based on the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. Unlike most PHP frameworks, Phalcon is implemented as an extension written in C in order to optimize performance. This is intended to boost execution speed and reduce resource usage with the goal of handling more requests per second than comparable frameworks written primarily in PHP.

phar: the phar extension provides a way to put entire PHP applications into a single file called a ‘phar’ (PHP Archive) for easy distribution and installation. In addition to providing this service, the phar extension also provides a file-format abstraction method for creating and manipulating tar and zip files through the PharData class, much as PDO provides a unified interface for accessing different databases. Phar archives are best characterized as a convenient way to group several files into a single file.

posix: this module contains an interface to those functions defined in the IEEE 1003.1 (POSIX.1) standards document which are not accessible through other means.

propro: a reusable split-off of pecl_http’s property proxy API.

pspell: a reusable split-off of pecl_http’s property proxy API. These functions allow you to check the spelling of a word and offer suggestions.

quickhash: the quickhash extension contains a set of specific strongly-typed classes to deal with specific set and hash implementations.

raphf: a reusable split-off of pecl_http’s persistent handle and resource factory API.

radius: this package is based on the libradius (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) of FreeBSD. It allows clients to perform authentication and accounting by means of network requests to remote servers. This PECL extension adds full support for Radius Authentication (RFC 2865) and Radius Accounting (RFC 2866). This package is available for Unix (tested on FreeBSD and Linux) and for Windows.

rar: PHP extension for reading RAR archives using bundled unRAR library. This extension gives you possibility to read Rar archives but doesn’t support writing Rar archives, because this is not supported by the UnRar library and is directly prohibited by its license.

readline: the readline function implements an interface to the GNU Readline library. These are functions that provide editable command lines. An example being the way Bash allows you to use the arrow keys to insert characters or scroll through command history. Because of the interactive nature of this library, it will be of little use for writing Web applications, but may be useful when writing scripts used from a command line.

recode: this module contains an interface to the GNU Recode library. The GNU Recode library converts files between various coded character sets and surface encodings.

reflection: PHP 5 comes with a complete reflection API that adds the ability to reverse’engineer classes, interfaces, functions, methods and extensions. Additionally, the reflection API offers ways to retrieve doc comments for functions, classes and methods.

rsync: this algorithm is using a rolling check-sum and a md4 check’sum for blocks of the file to generate a signature file. The signature file is used to generate a diff from the file on the remote site. This diff can be used on the local site to patch the file.

session: session support in PHP consists of a way to preserve certain data across subsequent accesses. This enables you to build more customized applications and increase the appeal of your website.

shmop: shmop is an easy to use set of functions that allows PHP to read, write, create and delete Unix shared memory segments.

simplexml: the SimpleXML extension provides a very simple and easily usable toolset to convert XML to an object that can be processed with normal property selectors and array iterators.

snmp: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely used protocol for monitoring the health and welfare of network equipment (for example, routers), computer equipment and even devices like UPSs. The SNMP extension provides a very simple and easily usable toolset for managing remote devices via the Simple Network Management Protocol. As it is a wrapper around the underlying Net-SNMP (or UCD-SNMP on older systems) library, all basic concepts are the same and the PHP functions change their behaviour depending on the Net-SNMP configuration files and environment variables. Beginning with PHP 5.4, an OO API is available. SNMP have the following features: retrieve information from an SNMP-capable device, either using single requests or multiple requests, manipulate configuration information on an SNMP-capable device, retrieve a fixed collection of information from an SNMP-capable device, convert between numerical and textual forms of MIB OIDs, and display MIB content and structure.

soap: the SOAP extension can be used to write SOAP Servers and Clients.

sockets: the socket extension implements a low–level interface to the socket communication functions based on the popular BSD sockets, providing the possibility to act as a socket server as well as a client.

sourceguardian: this PHP encoder protects your PHP code by compiling the PHP source code into a binary bytecode format, which is then supplemented with an encryption layer.

spl: the Standard PHP Library (SPL) is a collection of interfaces and classes that are meant to solve common problems. SPL provides a set of standard datastructure, a set of iterators to traverse over objects, a set of interfaces, a set of standard Exceptions, a number of classes to work with files and it provides a set of functions like spl_autoload_register().

spl_types: this extension aims at helping people making PHP a stronger typed language and can be a good alternative to scalar type hinting. It provides different typehandling classes as such as integer, float, bool, enum and string.

sqlite: this is an extension for the SQLite Embeddable SQL Database Engine. SQLite is a C library that implements an embeddable SQL database engine. Programs that link with the SQLite library can have SQL database access without running a separate RDBMS process. SQLite is not a client library used to connect to a big database server. SQLite is the server. The SQLite library reads and writes directly to and from the database files on disk.

sqlite3: support for SQLite version 3 databases.

ssh2: bindings to the libssh2 library which provide access to resources (shell, remote exec, tunneling, file transfer) on a remote machine using a secure cryptographic transport.

standard: the standard set of classes.

stats: this is the statistics extension. It contains few dozens of functions useful for statistical computations.

stem: a PHP extension that provides word stemming.

stomp: this extension allows php applications to communicate with any Stomp compliant Message Brokers through easy object oriented and procedural interfaces.

suhosin: is an advanced protection system for PHP installations. It was designed to protect servers and users from known and unknown flaws in PHP applications and the PHP core. Suhosin comes in two independent parts, that can be used separately or in combination. The first part is a small patch against the PHP core, that implements a few low–level protections against buffer overflows or format string vulnerabilities and the second part is a powerful PHP extension that implements numerous other protections.

sybase_ct: module which gets number of affected rows in last query, closes a Sybase connection, opens a Sybase server connection, moves internal row pointer, sets the deadlock retry count, fetch row as array, fetch a result row as an associative array, gets a result row as an enumerated array, returns the last message from the server

sysvmsg: shared memory support.

sysvsem: shared memory functions.

sysvshm: extension for shared memory.

tidy: tidy is a binding for the Tidy HTML clean and repair utility which allows you to not only clean and otherwise manipulate HTML documents, but also traverse the document tree.

timezonedb: timezone Database to be used with PHP’s date and time functions

tokenizer: the tokenizer functions provide an interface to the PHP tokenizer embedded in the Zend Engine. Using these functions you may write your own PHP source analyzing or modification tools without having to deal with the language specification at the lexical level.

trader: the trader extension is a free open source stock library based on TA–Lib. It’s dedicated to trading software developers requiring to perform technical analysis of financial market data.

translit: this module allows to transliterate non-latin character sets to latin.

uploadprogress: an extension to track progress of a file upload.

uri_template: implementation of URI Template specification for PHP.

uuid: this extension allows to generate a unique ID.

wddx: the Web Distributed Data Exchange (WDDX) is a XML-based technology that allows Web applications created with any platform to easily exchange data with one another over the Web.

weakref: the WeakRef class provides a gateway to objects without preventing the garbage collector from freeing those objects. It also provides a way to turn a weak reference into a strong one.

xdebug: the Xdebug extension helps you debugging your script by providing a lot of valuable debug information.

xml: XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a data format for structured document interchange on the Web.

xmlreader: the XMLReader extension is an XML Pull parser. The reader acts as a cursor going forward on the document stream and stopping at each node on the way.

xmlrpc: XML-RPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism. XML-RPC also refers generically to the use of XML for remote procedure call, independently of the specific protocol. This article is about the protocol named ‘XML-RPC’.

xmlwriter: this extension represents a writer that provides a non-cached, forward-only means of generating streams or files containing XML data.

xrange: xrange is a compiled extension that provides numeric iteration primitives to PHP on top of SPL. It includes a lean numeric range generator/iterator, modeled after Python’s xrange() function. It’s intended to provide an alternative for all numeric iteration and looping.

xsl: the XSL extension implements the XSL standard, performing XSLT transformations using the libxslt library

yaf: the Yet Another Framework (Yaf) extension is a PHP framework that is used to develop web applications.

yaml: this extension implements the YAML Ain’t Markup Language (YAML) data serialization standard. Parsing and emitting are handled by the LibYAML library. YAML is a human friendly data serialization standard for all programming languages.

yaz: this extension offers a PHP interface to the YAZ toolkit that implements the Z39.50 Protocol for Information Retrieval. With this extension you can easily implement a Z39.50 origin (client) that searches or scans Z39.50 targets (servers) in parallel.

zend guard loader: Zend Guard is the most widely accepted PHP encoding and obfuscation product on the market which protects your application from unlicensed use and reverse engineering.

zend_optimizer: allows PHP to run files encoded by Zend Guard which greatly enhances the performance of PHP applications. The Zend Optimizer goes over the code generated by the standard Zend run-time compiler and optimizes it for faster execution.

zip: this extension enables you to transparently read or write ZIP compressed archives and the files inside them.

zlib: this module enables you to transparently read and write gzip (.gz) compressed files, through versions of most of the filesystem functions which work with gzip-compressed files (and uncompressed files, too, but not with sockets).