Managing PHP Settings

Each SiteForge website can run its own PHP version and its own PHP runtime settings.

From the hosting panel you can:

• choose the PHP version for a website,
• edit selected php.ini values,
• work with built-in and configurable extensions,
• enable Redis where your package supports it,
• enable IonCube loader where the selected PHP version allows it,
• review PHP logs and restart the PHP container after changes.

Changing PHP Version

1. Log in to panel.siteforge.ie.
2. Open your websites list and choose the website you want to manage.
3. Go to Advanced → Developer Tools.
4. Scroll to the PHP version area.
5. Select the required version and save the change.

Some PHP features depend on the selected version. If an option is unavailable, switch to a supported version or contact support.

Common php.ini Settings

Commonly adjusted PHP directives include:

• memory_limit for per-script memory usage,
• upload_max_filesize for single file upload size,
• post_max_size for total request body size,
• max_execution_time for script runtime limits,
• max_input_vars for large forms and page builders,
• display_errors and log_errors for debugging,
• session.save_path and related session directives where supported.

PHP Extensions

SiteForge provides a mix of built-in and configurable PHP extensions.

• Built-in extensions are already available inside the website environment. Some are core components and cannot be disabled from the panel.
• Configurable extensions can be enabled where supported for that website and package. In your current setup these may include apcu, brotli, oauth, pdo_dblib, pdo_pgsql, pgsql, and xmlrpc.

What the Most Common Extensions Do

Extension	What it is used for
curl	Connecting to external APIs and websites
gd	Basic image resizing, thumbnails, and watermarks
imagick	Advanced image processing and format conversion
intl	Language, locale, number, and date handling
mbstring	UTF-8 and multibyte text support
mysqli / pdo_mysql / mysqlnd	Connecting PHP applications to MySQL or MariaDB
openssl / sodium	Encryption, certificates, and secure communication
redis	Object cache, sessions, queues, or temporary data when supported by the app
simplexml / dom / xmlreader / xmlwriter / xsl	Reading, writing, and transforming XML data
zip	Creating and extracting ZIP archives
exif	Reading photo metadata, often used in galleries
ldap	Integrating with directory services
bcmath / gmp	High-precision calculations
mailparse	Parsing and handling email message content
soap / xmlrpc	Legacy or enterprise integrations using older protocols
fileinfo	Detecting file types and MIME types
iconv / gettext	Character encoding and translations
Zend OPcache	Improves PHP performance by caching compiled bytecode

The panel may show additional built-in items such as Core, SPL, date, filter, session, tokenizer, Reflection, or Phar. These are mostly framework and runtime components rather than extensions you would normally manage day to day.

Redis

Redis can be enabled on supported websites and is typically used for object caching, application sessions, queue-like workloads, or speeding up repeated database reads.

• Redis runs inside the website's own environment.
• It is usually reachable locally, for example on 127.0.0.1:6379.
• It is private to that website by default.
• Site-specific Redis settings can be managed through redis.conf.
• After changing Redis-related settings, restart the PHP container so your website reloads the updated configuration.

IonCube Loader

IonCube loader is useful for commercial or encoded PHP applications that require it.

• It can be enabled on a per-website basis.
• Availability depends on the selected PHP version.
• If a site already loads IonCube through a manual custom directive, remove the duplicate directive before enabling the panel toggle.

Restarting PHP

After important PHP or Redis changes, restart the website's PHP container from the hosting panel.
This reloads the current php.ini and related runtime configuration for that website.