Hi John,
Thank you very much for your professional answer.
I can see that it really does solve the problem.
Just so that i make sure that i understood correctly:
all what i need to do is to have always the copy of the php.ini & .htaccess placed in the counter folder and that's it?
The reason I am asking is because you said :"So that it would not interfere with your other websites"
I don't understand what other websites do i have?
Can you please explain more?
Thanks a lot

Hello atef81,

You are very welcome! Yes, just leave the php.ini and .htaccess files in the Counter folder, so the rules will only affect files in the Counter folder.

For example: If you turned "buffering" off in the php.ini located in the public_html folder instead, it would turn buffering off for everything using that php.ini.

I noticed you have several Subdomains, and each one is essentially a separate website, and I wasn't sure if any of them require buffering.

If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,

-John-Paul

Thank you very much again John,
Sorry for my beginner level questions:
1- do I need to change the coding of the counter? or how does it know that it should read the php.ini in its folder, not the one on the root?
2- Why do we generally need the buffering option to be on at all? i.e. what harm can happen if i turned it off to all my subdomains?
Thank you so much.

Hello atef81,

No problem, I understand.

• You do not need to change anything. The .htaccess file in your /counter folder is pointing to the php.ini in the /counter folder, by specifying the suPHP_ConfigPath.


• Whether you need buffering depends on the type of queries you are running and how your site was coded. Due to this I do not know how it will affect your website as a whole. I recommend reading the Official PHP guide on Buffered and Unbuffered queries for additional detailed information.

If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,

-John-Paul

Hello atef81,

You don't need to change any coding of any of your files in the /counter directory, if things continue to work with the output_buffering turned off for that folder.

You generally don't need the output_buffering option turned on, and it's off on the server by default. But it is necessary for some scripts in order to function properly.

It looks like you had a /public_html/php.ini file, and also already had set your php.ini file recursive.

In that /public_html/php.ini file you had the entry output_buffering = On, and because it was recursive because of the .htaccess rules, it was also carrying down to your /counter folder causing the issues you first reported.

Placing another php.ini file inside of the /counter folder overrides the one from the /public_html directory, fixing the problem in this case.

Typically you don't want to set the output_buffering setting to On, but rather a limited value such as 4096, this is mentioned in the PHP.net output_buffering documentation.

You might also want to be careful about loading large files through PHP instead of providing a direct link to a large file instead. You can monitor your CPU usage to make sure your PHP scripts aren't causing any issues with this.

- Jacob

Ok. Thanks everyone.
My last question is: can I then cleanup the situation by having only one php.ini?
Currently i have 3 copies, one one the root, one in the arabic folder and one in the counter folder.
Is this normal?
thanks