Problem

You need PHP's built-in ftp functions for the ultra-cool script you are writing, but your service provider does not have PHP compiled with the --enable-ftp option.

Solution

If you have a shell account on a system with the same operating system as your web server, grab the PHP source tarball and build using:

--with-apxs --enable-ftp=shared

You can check which flags your provider used by putting a phpinfo() call in a script on your server.

Once compiled, you will find a "modules/ftp.so" file which you can copy to your web server and enable either by putting:

extension=ftp.so

in your php.ini file or by adding this to the top of your script: