Two Stop Bits | Meta: This isn't meant to imply that any of the sites in the results are actuall...

Lammy 274 days ago | parent

Meta: This isn't meant to imply that any of the sites in the results are actually still running PHP3 since Cool URIs Don't Change and they could be powered by pretty much anything. I just thought it was interesting to see which sites have some sort of lineage from software that old.

There's a roughly three-year period of time when it was most likely for sites to adopt a `.php3` URI scheme:

— 1998-06: First appearance of PHP 3.0 https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php#history.php3

— 1999-01-04: Zend Engine (PHP 4) announced https://web.archive.org/web/19990421025151/http://www.zend.c... “Development on Zend will be completed in the first quarter of 1999, and a final release is expected on the second quarter that year.”

— 1999-10: First of several PHP4 public beta releases: https://web.archive.org/web/19991012225049/http://php.net/ve...

— 2000-05-22: PHP 4.0.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20000621094131/http://www.php.ne.../

— 2000-10-20: Final PHP3 release, version 3.0.18 https://www.php.net/manual/php3.php

Compare mod_php (Apache) installation docs from before and from after the release of PHP 4:

https://web.archive.org/web/19990508133533/http://www.php.ne... sez “`AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .php3` — You can choose any extension you wish here. `.php3` is simply the one we suggest.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20001110084900/http://www.php.ne... sez “For PHP 3: `AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .php3`. For PHP 4: `AddType application/x-httpd-php .php`. — You can choose any extension you wish here. `.php` is simply the one we suggest. You can even include `.html`.”

qingcharles 274 days ago
How is Google determining that these pages are PHP3?
This is one of the pages from the SERPs:
https://www.therealjackrussell.com/trial/height.php
But there is nothing in the page or its HTTP headers that would tell you the page is even PHP (except for the extension which might be misleading...)
- Lammy 273 days ago
  It's just based on the file extension of the URL and nothing more. No way to tell if it's actually PHP behind the scenes.
  I see that page in my results too and the one you linked is post-redirect from an older domain that has the php3 URI scheme:
```
  [lammy@popola] curl -I http://www.terrier.com/trial/height.php3
  HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
  Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:51:07 GMT
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
  Content-Length: 258
  Connection: keep-alive
  Location: http://www.theRealJackRussell.com/trial/height.php
```
  It is admittedly a little fuzzy since Google can just decide not to honor the `filetype:`/`ext:` operator like they do for so many others. I also included the `lr=lang_en` parameter which limits the results quite a bit, but I figured that would be more enjoyable as a submission to an English-language community like this one :)
  Kagi's results are even better but I submitted Google instead due to the paywall: https://kagi.com/search?q=filetype%3Aphp3
  The idea for this submission came from this xltronic-dot-com URL when I was looking up some old 808state stuff yesterday, a site which was not listed by either search engine: http://xltronic.com/mb/99108/faq.php3