HostGator

If you are getting a 500 Internal Server Error when trying to install PHPLD (PHP Link Directory) version 3 it is most likely because of file permission problems.

When you uploaded your files to your hosting they probably got set with 777 file permissions. This is a security threat, and Hostgator is preventing these files from being exsecuted beacuse of this threat. You need to set certain files to 755 to continue.

You can confirm this by checking you error log in cPanel. From the cPanel front page click 'Error log'. The most recent entries should be at the top. If you have an entry that reads.

error: file is writable by others:

then you need to change the file permissions of this file.  755 is the best option.  

When creating a new subdomain using cPanel a folder is automatically created using the subomain name. For example if I create the subdomain 'shop.mydomain.com', a folder called 'shop' is created in the root of this domain. Sometimes this automatically assigned folder name is not acceptable. Maybe it conflicts with other folders.

However, when using the X3 theme of cPanel it is possible to define the folder name when creating a subdomain. To determine if your version of cPanel is using the X3 theme, login to cPanel and check the URL in your browser. If you see 'x3' in the URL you are using the X3 theme.

If your hosting company has not enabled the X3 cPanel theme, ask them to do so. Bluehost use this theme as standard, and Hostgator will enable it if your submit a support ticket.

Once you have the X3 theme enabled, create a new subdomain and you will see the following form:

In the 'Document Root' control you can specificy the folder to use for the subdomain. It is not possible to set the folder of an already created subdomain. However, it is easy to delete a subdomain, and then re-create it, specify the new folder to use.

Here is a working format for Drupal Cron tasks on hostgator.com. After much hunting around, as one often has to do, I have found a working format. It's a shame the host's help files are not more forthcoming with this information. I had to trawl through lots of forum posts to find this.

POST http://www.yourdomain.com/cron.php /dev/null

I strongly recommend that you rename your cron.php file, or else anyone can run it.