CodeIgniter Hosting UK: CodeIgniter 4, 3 and 2

The framework behind a lot of bespoke UK systems

CodeIgniter was a favourite of small agencies and freelance developers through the 2010s because it was light, fast and easy to learn. As a result, a lot of business systems in the UK, such as booking tools, CRMs, quoting systems and trade portals, run on CodeIgniter 2 or 3. Many are still working perfectly well and quietly running the business, long after the developer who wrote them has moved on.

We host all generations of CodeIgniter, and we're comfortable taking on apps with no documentation.

CodeIgniter 4

• PHP: CodeIgniter 4 needs PHP 8.1 or newer, with the intl and mbstring extensions plus mysqlnd for MySQL.
• Document root: public/, so app/, vendor/ and writable/ are never reachable from a browser.
• Environment: CI_ENVIRONMENT = production in the .env file, so detailed errors stay hidden.
• writable/: owned by the site's own user, for cache, logs, sessions and uploads.
• Tasks: spark commands run as Plesk scheduled tasks.

Composer and Git deployment are available in Plesk, so your developer can deploy updates cleanly.

CodeIgniter 3 and 2

CodeIgniter 3 apps have the application/ and system/ folders in the web root and an index.php front controller. They were written for PHP 5.6 to 7.x. On PHP 8.2 and later, CodeIgniter 3 and the code built on it typically throw deprecation warnings about dynamic properties, and older apps hit removed functions such as each(). Common fixes:

• run the app on the PHP version it was built for, isolated, while it's updated
• apply the community patches that bring CodeIgniter 3's system folder up to PHP 8
• fix the application code: database calls, removed functions, stricter type handling
• move session storage from files in /tmp to the database if sessions behave oddly after a move

CodeIgniter 2 is older still and usually needs PHP 5.6. See PHP 5 hosting and legacy PHP hosting.

Upgrading or rebuilding

There's no upgrade path from CodeIgniter 3 to 4: version 4 is a rewrite with namespaces, a new folder structure and different libraries. For a working CI3 app, the realistic options are to keep it on a compatible PHP version and patch it, rewrite it in CodeIgniter 4, or rebuild in Laravel if it's growing. We can quote for any of these after looking at the code, and keep the current app running while the work happens.

Moving your CodeIgniter app to dijitul

We copy the code, database and uploads, update the base_url and database settings, recreate cron jobs, and check email sending, file uploads and sessions on a temporary address before switching DNS. If your developer has gone, see abandoned website takeover. Otherwise order dijitul Complete Hosting or call 01623 650333.

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