PHP was designed to be very flexible, providing very simple server-side scripting, command-line interface programming, and even mature and robust object oriented projects and GUI development.

A great article on object-oriented programming states, in part:
Object Oriented Programming, as the name implies, is about programming with objects. But what exactly is an object? ... An object is an entity that encapsulates properties and behaviour that is specific to that entity.

But aside from PHP's object oriented capabilities (which will be extended considerably with php5 hosting solutions, in which the access modifiers public, private, and protected will be available), several other considerations should be reviewed when selecting a PHP hosting provider for flexibility.

First and foremost, will your PHP hosting site be able to alter the configuration of the PHP configuration file, php.ini? There are numerous reasons to request and require this feature of your PHP virtual host site, including the ability to alter the include_path, file uploads, session timeouts, enabling extensions, and error logging.

Bottom line is that when selecting your PHP webhost, make sure that you will be allowed some level of control over the behavior of PHP inside your account. If you are an expert PHP developer, it will make sense to select a provider that specializes in expert PHP hosting.


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