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How does PHP inheritance work?

Timothy Haines
  • Updated

Question

What exactly is PHP inheritance, and how does this work with cPanel?

 

Answer

In WHM’s MultiPHP Manager interface (WHM >> Home >> Software >> MultiPHP Manager), the term “Inherit” refers to how Apache determines a domain or virtual host’s PHP version.

 

PHP inheritance follows the following path:

  1. You set the PHP version at the system level.

  2. You set a cPanel account or domain to use the Inherit option in WHM’s MultiPHP Manager interface (WHM >> Home >> Software >> MultiPHP Manager).

  3. Apache searches the cPanel & WHM default document root of the current domain and continues up the directory tree until it finds a .htaccess file with PHP version information. 

  4. Apache locates a .htaccess file with PHP version information.

  5. Each cPanel account or domain set to Inherit now uses the PHP version in the .htaccess file.

Note:
  • If Apache does not find an .htaccess file, it uses the system default PHP version from WHM’s MultiPHP Manager interface (WHM >> Home >> Software >> MultiPHP Manager).
  • If Apache finds an invalid version of PHP in the .htaccess file, it uses the system default PHP version set in WHM’s MultiPHP Manager interface (WHM >> Home >> Software >> MultiPHP Manager).

For more on this, please refer to our excellent documentation here: https://docs.cpanel.net/ea4/php/php-inheritance/

 

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