EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Yeah, I was told that yesterday by a major ISP/web hosting company’s tech support staff. The beginning of the sentence (as abbreviated by the ‘…’) was “I don’t understand PHP…” That’s right, folks. A tech support peon doesn’t understand PHP programming, so the company doesn’t support it. Nevermind that the reason we’re spending this exorborant fee (this is my employer’s web hosting account, not mine) is to have a server that supports PHP and MySQL. The price? $50/month. I’d think they could buy a copy of PHP for Dummies or something for that price.

I’ve spent two days on hold with these people. It’s having definitly effects on me. I can’t type as well as I could before. My vision is going fuzzy. I shake uncontrollably. I’ve been frothing at the mouth. OK, so a couple of those are exaggerations.

Let me back up and explain the problem. We were hosted on a Windows server, which is fine and dandy, except our hosting provider doesn’t supply any MySQL databases or the PHP technology on its Windows servers. So, move to the Unix server. Well, that’s OK, we have PHP now…but if you don’t upgrade to the next level, you don’t get any MySQL databases. So, upgrade to the next level ($50/month + $50 set up fee). OK, fine. Everything should work now, right?

First problem, no one emailed us the new login and password. Why didn’t the old one still work? I have no idea. I would assume they’d just change where the domain and login points to, but I would apparently be making asses. Anyway, two days after calling tech support over this, they send the login and password. So, login in, make sure we’re on the right server. Create a database (the only one I’m allowed. That’s right. $50/month for ONE database). Fire up FTP software and upload Textpattern and PHPMyAdmin. Someway, somehow, Textpattern installs with few problems (I have to delete the .htaccess file in the base directory of the host, but that’s all). So, go to the development server (mine) and dump the Textpattern database so I can upload it to the new one. Feeling pretty good right now…you know what comes next.

So, then I go to access PHPMyAdmin and dump my SQL into it’s SQL. What? PHPMyAdmin won’t load? Why not? Check the config files, check all the variables, look for stray .htaccess files. Nothing. Everything looks right. OK, try it again. Nope, still no go. Scratch head. Look closely at the error. Hmm, that doesn’t make sense.

The requested URL /~gtrnewl%gtrnews.com/cgi-bin/php.dat/phpmyadmin/index.php was not found on this server

Well, now, wait. Of course it’s not in the cgi-bin. It’s in the public html directory, as it’s meant to be served, not passed through. And it’s definitly not inside of any file named php.dat. So, call tech support.

First guy ends up hanging up on me. Second guy gives me the infamous quote above. Third guy sends the problem up to the web hosting department who’ll “get back to me” with a solution. That was yesterday afternoon. Back to work today, back on the phone with tech support. Now, as you all know, calling tech support and talking to tech support are two different things at a big company. Most of the time I was on hold or being transfered from person to person. Sadly, this company’s hold music is only two or three songs repeated again and again.

Today wasn’t any better, though. First guy tells me, yeah, the people upstairs (I say they’re upstairs. I have doubts about the direction, though) say that it’s not their problem and I need to set the document root in PHPMyAdmin. He also emails me their response. Yep, just what he read me on the phone.

So, thinking I might have missed something, I open up PHPMyAdmin’s config files again. Nope, no document root. Now, I know Apache has a document root setting…but I can’t set that, not on a shared host. So, I look in less likely files. Nope, not there.

While I’m looking, I get a call from the company again. Some other guy, this time just reading me the email again. Called just to read me that again. I felt like Arthur Dent at the beginning of Life, The Universe, and Everything . I’m talking about that part where he gets called a jerk. That sealed it; I’m through taking their shit.

Once I’m sure that I’m not doing anything wrong, I start testing stuff. I upload two simple PHP files. One connects to the MySQL server and, if successful, says “Connected.” Otherwise, it returns a MySQL error. The other simply echoes “Hello World” and the results of phpinfo(). Neither one works reliably. In fact, the MySQL one has yet to work. Same error, but with appropriate filename changes at the end. So, I call them back. Tell this final guy what’s going on, and he says he’ll send it up to Web Hosting and get it sorted out.

Am I mad? Have I lost all control over PHP?