Why is the wrong php.ini being used?

Question

I've got WordPress installed on an add-on domain ( shared hosting environment), with a theme that uses ini_get('allow_url_fopen') to determine how to reference post images. ini_get('allow_url_fopen') is returning a value different than what is in my custom php.ini file, which is located in the WP installation directory.

If I run phpinfo() from a test file in the WP directory, I see that PHP is has these settings:

Configuration File (php.ini) Path   /usr/lib
Loaded Configuration File   /home/ACCOUNT/public_html/ADD-ON DIRECTORY/php.ini

If, however, I run phpinfo() from /home/ACCOUNT/public_html/ADD-ON DIRECTORY/wp-content, a different configuration file is used:

Configuration File (php.ini) Path   /usr/lib
Loaded Configuration File   /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Why is the wrong configuration file being loaded?

Answer 1

Okay, my host is using suPHP. And with suPHP (and, I presume, phpSuExec), subdirectories do not inherit the configuration from php.ini files. (They will use the default php.ini.)

http://www.geeksengine.com/article/php-include-path.html

Two ways around this:

• Place a custom php.ini file in each directory where scripts are loaded from
• Use a suPHP_ConfigPath /home/username/public_html/ directive in .htaccess to point to the directory containing your custom php.ini and have it affect all subdirectories that don't already contain a php.ini

Answer 2

This is a problem related to your hosting company, not to php in particular. If you are using a specific system that you build yourself, you'll need to look at which apache extension is used to run php files.

For example, on my system i built for work, i use SUPHP as a script engine. This allows me to configure where to look for a specific PHP.ini file.

Good luck