Ideal

To get the most out of concrete5, you need:

• PHP 5.2.x
• Python 2.2 (only required by HTMLDiff, which is used when comparing multiple versions of pages.)
• MySQL 5.x or higher.
• Apache (we've heard from lots of people using IIS with concrete5, but this is not recommended or part of our testing process)

Possible

concrete5 will still limp along mostly functional if you only have:

• MySQL 4.1
• PHP 5.1.x, including
  • GD support (typically included)
  • The MySQL extensions to PHP (mysql_connect, etc...). These are typically included.
  • SimpleXML support (typically included)

Bad Ideas

Some of these setups can be made to work, but really why create problems you don't need?

• Cloud Computing is hit or miss. We've seen decent performance out of some providers, and horrible performance out of others. Whatever you may have read, "the cloud" is not magical and won't help you perform better out of the box. A well provisioned unix server will do a great job of running your website. Unless you really expect huge spikes in demand, you're not really taking advantage of the true benefit of cloud computing. Just sayin'.

• Windows Computing exists in the corporate environment because Microsoft has awesome sales channels. If you have to get concrete5 running on a Windows box, there are several ways you can. There are any number of political reasons you might want to, but there are no technical reasons why you would. LAMP stacks are better.

• Budget Webhosting is great, but it's also a race to the bottom. Those companies have to keep their VC masters happy in what is quickly becoming a commodity market, so something has to give. What we find typically gives is the quality of service. Sure you may have found a sweet deal on unlimited bandwidth for a buck twenty per month, but your site is on a server with four thousand other sites and MySQL is crying under the load. concrete5 is always going to bring a lot more overhead to your website than just a static webpage would have. If your budget webhost offers concrete5 and it works well, more power to you. If your site seems slow, chances are there's not much we can do beyond suggest you get on a server that isn't over sold. There's some good options out there if you're hunting on a budget, just check out our hosting page.