The so called "Safe Mode" refers to tweaked PHP interpreter. The term is about crippling the language and extensions. For example fopen() is restricted to allow to open only the files one owns. This initially sounds like a good idea (at least for users, that don't know that this is what UNIX file permissions are for), but it requires that one cannot execute any UNIX utility via backticks, system() or exec(). Many other things then need also to be disabled to make PHP's 'safe mode' really 'safe'. This also requires providers to only provide PHP as CGI language and to disallow Perl, AWK and shell or others for use. One of my last providers even did "chmod o-rx /usr/bin/* /bin/*" in the hope this made everything more secure (didn't work ;) Other Bissell Products Cook's Tools & Gadgets Baby Store dyson filters Sanding Blocks

So the 'safe mode' trashes many PHP scripts, including ewiki; and I feel it is important to tell users to avoid providers of Safe-Mode-PHP or PHP4U and other spin-offs.