Really confused about installing PHP Modules

Question

I need to add http://us3.php.net/xsl this module to my PHP but I'm really confused how I actually do this? It says in install from that link 'PHP 5 includes the XSL extension by default and can be enabled by adding the argument --with-xsl[=DIR] to your configure line. DIR is the libxslt installation directory.' But unsure where these files would be? I have a VPS and access to WHM Cpanel, can I do this from there? I came across the software and install module bit in WHM but get the feeling that's not what I want...

Answer 1

Go to WHM -> Software -> EasyApache (Apache Update)

On the EasyApache page, choose Start customizing based on profile now, and after a couple screens, choose Exhaustive Options List. Select the modules you want to install, XSL in your case, and proceed to recompile.

Answer 2

You need to compile PHP manually, if you want any modules that you don't currently have. There are plenty of tutorials how to do it, for example if you have Apache 2 as a webserver, then follow this page on php.net: http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.unix.apache2.php

When you compile PHP, one of the commands to do is

./configure

in which you can (and most webhostings do) supply many many arguments, which say which modules you want to have installed and what features PHP can use. It may look like this:

./configure '--prefix=/usr/local/php' '--with-config-file-path=/usr/local/php/lib' '--with-apxs' '--with-iconv=/usr/local/php' '--with-openssl=/usr' '--with-zlib=/usr' '--with-mysql' '--with-pgsql=/Users/marc/cvs/entropy-php4/php-module/build/postgresql-build' '--enable-cgi' '--with-gd' '--with-png-dir=/usr/local/php' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr/local/php' '--with-t1lib=/usr/local/php' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/php' '--with-tiff-dir=/usr/local/php' '--with-curl=/usr/local/php' '--with-mcal=/usr/local/php' '--with-mcrypt=/usr/local/php' '--with-mhash=/usr/local/php' '--with-pdflib=/usr/local/php' '--with-imap=../imap-2002d' '--with-imap-ssl=/usr' '--with-expat-dir=/usr/local/php' '--with-gettext=/usr/local/php' '--with-dom=/usr/local/php' '--with-dom-xslt=/usr/local/php' '--with-dom-exslt=/usr/local/php' '--with-xslt-sablot=/usr/local/php' '--with-mime-magic=/usr/local/php/etc/magic.mime' '--with-mssql=/usr/local/php' '--with-fbsql=/Users/marc/cvs/entropy-php4/php-module/build/frontbase-build/Library/FrontBase' '--with-ming=/Users/marc/cvs/entropy-php4/php-module/build/ming-build' '--enable-xslt' '--with-ldap' '--with-xml' '--with-xmlrpc' '--with-iodbc=/usr' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-dbx' '--enable-dbase' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-exif' '--enable-wddx' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-mbstring'

it this example there are a lot of enabled modules. You can also see what "configure line" was used to compile your current version of PHP in phpinfo (it's right at the top, third line).