this will be one of the shortest How-To's in the history of how-to's.
it's a simple way to find out what modules and whatnot are enabled on your server's PHP.
to do this, we'll create a phpinfo() file. (remember, this will be the shortest how-to you'll likely ever see)
Step 1:
Open notepad, or your favorite text editor.
Step 2:
Place this code into your new file:
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php echo "phpinfo()";
phpinfo(); ?>
</body>
</html>
(note, there are other ways to do this, this just happens to be one of them. also note that the first "phpinfo()" will just show the word "phpinfo()" in the left of your page when opened in a browser. this is a good example of using the echo function to create webpages.)
Step 3:
Save your file with any name but end it with .php.
(example: phpinfo.php)
Step 4:
Upload your page to your account's public_html directory.
Step 5:
Open the page in a browser (
http://yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php)
And there you have it, you can check to see if exec() is enabled (a popular one), and nearly anything else about the PHP on your server.
I hope this helps everybody out.
-Trey