Why does Symfony not work well on shared hosting?

Question

I read that Symfony does not work well on a shared hosting environment, why is that? In the tutorial I read you had to edit Apache configuration but it seemed that only enabled the uses of the Symfony debugger.

Answer 1

You should be able to set up webroot directory different than project main directory. Webroot should be web/ project's directory. You can read about this in symfony book.

Another thing is, that it is nice to have shell access to execute some symfony tasks.

Answer 2

The way Symfony 1.0 was set up out of the box didn't lend itself to shared hosting with the freeze-unfreeze system but that's been dropped in favour of bundling the core with the project.

As Michał Pipa says, depending on the amount of customisation the host allows, you many need to modify the web root directory, but this isn't a major issue.

Again, as Michał Pipa says, shell access is really handy for Symfony but a decent shared hosting provider these days should give you that.

In the early days of Symfony there could be issues with shared hosting but as both Symfony and shared hosting have come on since 2007 it's less of a problem these days.

EDIT: The /sf/ directory is mainly used for the web debugger and you can certainly live without that in production but, if you really need it, there are other ways to map it without touching the Apache config - such as copying or symlinking.

Answer 3

Agreed with everyone, and adding thoses generalities why I dont like shared hosting, and why they're bad for any serious application

• They're not always secure, depending on how serious is your host
• They're frequently unstable and slowdowns can occur : you can't predict others ressources usage peaks
• They rarely get latest (or at least recent) php/mysql version
• Only a few provide (restricted) shell access
• Upgrades via FTP could be painful
• Frameworks working with command line utilities (symfony is not the only one) can be problematic to use
• You don't have hand on php/apache config, and aren't able to install extensions or software you need.
• etc, there are plenty of arguments

If you don't need or can't afford a dedicated server, you should go for a VPS solution, it's best way to go with all advantages of a dedicated, for less the price !