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(dv) How do I enable FastCGI?

Applies to: (dv) 3.5, (dv) 4.0
Difficulty: Medium
Time needed: 20 minutes
Tools needed: Plesk administrator access

Applies to: (dv) 4.0
- Difficulty: Easy
- Time Needed: 10
- Tools Required: Plesk administrator access
Applies to: (dv) 3.5
- Difficulty: Medium
- Time Needed: 20
- Tools Required: SSH, root access, Plesk administrator access

Overview

This article will explain how to configure a domain on your (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server to run PHP as FastCGI. This can improve the speed of your web pages. For more information about FastCGI, please see their website:

http://www.fastcgi.com/drupal/

Another reason to run PHP as FastCGI is to allow PHP to run as your domain/FTP user rather than as the Apache user. Because of the ownership that Plesk assigns to your website files and directories, Apache does not have permission to write to your web directories by default. This can cause permission errors in some applications - for example, a PHP upload script.

Requirements

Please replace example.com in the examples with your own domain, and domainuser with your own domain/FTP user that you set up in Plesk.

End of Life Warning

This service has a pending End of Life. Please move to a current service as soon as possible. For more information, please see: (dv) Dedicated-Virtual 4.0: Migration Information.

Instructions

Following these instructions will configure your domain to run PHP as FastCGI, with the user and group that Plesk uses for your domain site files.

TIP:

If the screenshots you see here don't match your version of Plesk, please see the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server 3.5 section.

These screenshots are for the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server 4.0 and Plesk 11. If you are on a (dv) 4.0 and are running Plesk 10.x, please see this article for upgrade information: How do I upgrade Plesk?

Log into the Plesk Control Panel for your domain. See Figure 1:

Figure 1: The Plesk Control Panel. Click for a larger view.
Click on the Websites & Domains tab at the top.
Scroll down to Show Advanced Operations and click.
Click on Website Scripting and Security.
This opens the Hosting Settings for your domain. Under Web Scripting and Statistics, you'll see PHP support (run as and a drop-down menu). The default is Apache module. Select FastCGI application and tick the box for FastCGI support.
Click OK to save your settings. That's it! FastCGI is now enabled for your (dv) 4.0.

TIP:

This article applies to (dv) 3.5 and below ONLY. For (dv) 4.0, please see: the (dv) 4.0 tab.

For complete instructions, please see this (mt) Wiki article: (dv) 3.5:Run PHP as FastCGI and resolve Apache permission errors.

CAUTION:

Please note that (mt) Media Temple does not support changing your default Apache configuration. This server modification is not guaranteed to work with other configurations you might have. Please consider making a backup copy of your (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server before proceeding, as (mt) Media Temple does not support the procedures covered in this walkthrough.

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