On Friday, the geniuses at DreamHost moved my site to a new server. This move, like the one for the email server, was completely unannounced. Unlike the email server move, this one had a drastic and material impact on my site and my business.

I was away from the computer since Friday morning and subsequently, I haven't made any money in over 3 days. My site was completely unloadable from Friday afternoon until just a few minutes ago.

The issue was that a command in my htaccess file to allow html files to be read by PHP was apparently using mod_php



This was fixable by changing it to

This allows visitors to read all the pages on the site, but now, one very small detail remains unresolved...

My licensing system (for the software I sell) requires bcmath functions in PHP. DreamHost's default installation doesn't have those enabled. Previously it was impossible to enable them on a per-website basis and I don't believe that has changed. When I put the site up I had to have someone install our own instance of PHP (4.something at the time) to be able to include bcmath. So far I haven't been able to reach the friend that did that install for me.

This custom installation has broken with the server move. Therefore, while I can run my shopping cart and make sales, licensing will fail and people won't necessarily get everything they've paid for.

Would anyone be able to take a look at the licensing and possibly offer any suggestions for using some other functions other than those from bcmath (if it's even possible)?

Or alternatively, perhaps offer some help in getting PHP5 custom installed into my hosting space with bcmath functions enabled?

So far, DreamHost haven't been helpful except to offer the replacement to the php_mod command mentioned above. Only after I had already identified the specific problem to them though. Their first fix was simply to direct my pages to using their PHP5 install.

This is really stressful.