I'm working on setting up a web site with the Elgg social networking software. In order to use it, the XAMPP package has to be installed, so I installed the latest 1.8.3. version.
So far I had no experience with PHP or MySQL, and just a little bit with Apache (a long time age). However I'm a ICT professional, and I always read installation manuals, release notes, and I always check ini files so see if improvements can be made.
I also checked the PHP.ini file that is included with the XAMPP package. and I noticed some things that seem to be wrong. At the end of the php.ini file there is a reference to eAccelerator, and there are quite a few settings for eAccelerator. The line to use eAccelerator has been disabled as it should, since eAccelerator is not supported with PHP 5.5. So this whole eAccelerator section has nothing tot do in a PHP 5.5 ini file!
There should be another accelerator in PHP 5.5 as a standard feature, but I don't know if it has been activated, and if there are any settings for this accelerator.
I noticed that the display_errors and display_startup_errors directives are set to on, but the documentation for these directives suggest they should be set to off in the production version.
The track_errors directive is set to on, the documentation suggest it should be set to off in the production version.
The Elgg documentation for XAMPP suggests to "Edit the php.ini file and change arg_separator.output = & to arg_separator.output = &". I noticed that the line for this directive has been disabled, and that & is the default value anyway.
The upload_max_filesize directive has been set to 2M. I suppose I have to increase this value if I want to allow Elgg users to upload bigger files to Elgg from their web browser?
The session.bug_compat_42 directive is set to on, the documentation warns that this is a security problem, and it should be set to off in the production version. The session.bug_compat_warn is also set to on, and it should be set to off in the production version.
I would be very grateful if some one can comment on these issues, in German or English, both languages are fine with me.,