Bluehost Introduces FastCGI Acceleration

Have you had a chance to try Bluehost‘s FascCGI acceleration for PHP? FastCGI was introduced recently, and you can enable this new feature right form your cPanel:

FastCGI for PHP makes all your PHP applications run through mod_fastcgi instead of mod_phpsusexec. This eliminates the overhead of loading the PHP interpretor on every hit. Since it is always in memory ready for the next hit, the responses will be generated faster. This is done without a need to modify to your existing PHP applications will be performed so you can easily enable and disable it at will.

FastCGI Benefits:

• PHP scripts will run faster. The PHP interpreter is loaded into memory rather than calling from storage for every hit, greatly improving performance of your scripted site.
• You will use less Server Resources. Since the server does not have load the PHP interpreter for each hit, you will be able to accommodate a higher traffic site without exceeding your CPU quota.
• NO modifications to your existing code are required. Everything you currently run will work with FastCGI for PHP.

Potential Problems with Fast CGI:

• You will only have one php.ini file available for all subdirectories (/home/USERNAME/public_html/php.ini). This is necessary to help optimize the website code as much as possible. If you need multiple php.ini files to accommodate different scripting needs, you can disable FastCGI for PHP on any of your subdirectories while leaving the rest of the account enabled for performance. Please contact support if you need to do this.
• There can be a few minute delay in any updates you make to your PHP environment (ie, php.ini changes). Since your php.ini is loaded into memory for greater speed, every hit does not re-read it from storage.

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