HooligansInDaKitchen

I can't find any access to php.ini, and my host company has not replied to any of my tickets, e-mails, and phone calls. Is the php.ini configuration file usually accessible? I mostly just want to know what the common practice is for implementing extensions, on a non-local server where there is not much support or access.

I am new to PHP and am unclear on how to implement standard PHP extensions on my website. I want to use the MCRYPT and MHASH functions to secure data before sending. My PHP script runs fine through the command line interface, producing a ciphertext and hash, but after putting it up on my site I get an error message saying I am calling an undefined function. I have read the documentation on my host's control panel; I know it supports PHP, my other scripts that don't use extensions work fine, but I don't see anything about adding support for extensions. I have also tried to dynamically load (dl()) mcrypt and mhash, but that does not seem to work either. What is the standard procedure for loading these kind of extensions on a host server?