Enabling or disabling PHP extensions on webhosting packages

To change the PHP extensions of your webhosting package, log in to the control panel and click 'Shared Hosting' in the menu. Next, select your domain below 'Products'.

Click 'Advanced' in the top bar and click 'PHP settings'.

The PHP settings page in your control panel is divided into two sections: 'General' settings on the left side and 'Extensions & settings' on the right side.

In this article we will focus on the settings below 'Extensions & settings'. The general settings can be found the the article 'The PHP-settings of my webhosting package'.

Below we will give a short desciption of each option, mostly originating from PHP.net. For more information it is best to read the documentation on PHP.net. 

allow_url_fopen

This option enables the URL-aware fopen wrappers. They allow URLs to be accesed like files.

allow_url_include

This option allows the following functions to be used with URL-aware fopen wrappers: include, include_once, require, require_once. To be able to use this option, allow_url_fopen needs to be enabled.

amqp

AMQP means Advanced Message Queuing Protocol. The AMQP extension for PHP allows for cummunication with servers compatible with AMQP.

apcu

APCU is a form of PHP caching.

brotli

Brotli compesses HTTP content. Brotli is often compared to Gzip.

display_errors

Enabling display_errors causes error messages from your website to be shown in the browser, which can be useful for troubleshooting. Because showing your errors publicly is not always wanted, you can always find your errors in your Error Log.

display_startup_errors

Shows error messages during the startup sequence of PHP. Unless you are debugging, it is best to leave this set to 'off'.

file_uploads

This allows or disables HTTP file uploads.

grpc

Remote Procedure Call framework. Contains libraries that allow communication of clients and servers that support grpc.

imagick

ImageMagick. Can be used to edit and convert images and works with almost all image types.

ioncube

Encryption and optimalisation for PHP code. ionCube can improve both your website's security and performance.

log_errors

This settings enables or disables logging errors to your Error Log.

mailparse

An extension with which you can extract data from emails. For instance to process orders or forms.

mongodb

Enables support for mongodb, a NoSQL database management system.

newrelic

Monitoring software for appliocations and infrastructure. A newrelic licence key can be entered below newrelic.license, in the 'General' options on the PHP settings page.

oauth

Authorisation protocol which uses tokens. This allows an application access for a set time without using login credentials.

opcache

Caching for PHP scripts. Prevents PHP scripts from having to load on every request.

opcache.validate_timestamps

When enabled, will check PHP scripts for changes. The frequency can be set in the left column below opcache.revalidate_freq.

output_buffering

When enabled, HTML will be sent to the browser all at once after your PHP script is done.

When disabled, HTML will be sent simultaneously but in pieces.

phalcon

Phalcon is an open source full stack PHP framework, optimised for high performance. Phalcon is currently only supported with PHP version 7.4.

psr

PSR stands for PHP Standard Recommendation. This PHP extension offers the interfaces of the PSR standard which are determined by the PHP-FIG group.

rdkafka

Kafka client for PHP, based on librdkafka.

session.use_cookies

This option determines whether session ID's are stored in cookies.

ssh2

Secure Shell 2. Allows access to resources (shell, remote exec, tunneling, file transfer) on an external computer or server by using secure cryptographic transport.

yaml

YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a data serialisation language for programming languages.

zmq

ZeroMQ is a software library which is used to design and implement a message-based application.