If IT has a virtualized server (aka OpenVZ or Solus VM) you may be able to ask for a couple of VPS containers for this work. It encourages good version control practices and can be provisioned and destroyed at each semester.

Some shared hosting providers only offer PHP 5.3, however you will find that in the wild the overwhelming majority of Laravel applications are deployed on VPS containers provided by Linode, Digital Ocean, etc. You may be able to push for an upgrade to 5.4 if you cite potential security and ongoing challenges to teaching up-to-date content due to 5.3 being end-of-life (http://php.net/eol.php).

Laravel 4.2 requires 5.4+ as well as a number of popular libraries, mainly because traits are getting more and more popular.

Best of luck!

Hi Mike Thanks very much for your reply. I know that VPS containers are the ideal way to go and in and ideal universe (one may say parallel universe) this would be the case with out IT dept :) As mentioned I have requested this and while it may be possible but my gut feeling is that because we are the first to deploy Laravel the need is low priority for them to set up the ideal environment in time (good for future groups).

So if the VPS is not implemented in time I was hoping there was a quick fix .. but I guess there may not be.

Cheers

The closest thing to a quick fix would be to use 4.1 instead of 4.2.

On the bright side upgrading from 4.1 to 4.2 is pretty easy so you might be able to do this until you can get a platform that isn't past its End of Life date.

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