Python web hosting: Why are server restarts necessary?

Question

We currently run a small shared hosting service for a couple of hundred small PHP sites on our servers. We\'d like to offer Python support too, but from our initial researc

Answer 1

Depends on how you deploy the Python application. If it is as a pure Python CGI script, no restarts are necessary (not advised at all though, because it will be super slow). If you are using modwsgi in Apache, there are valid ways of reloading the source. modpython apparently has some support and accompanying issues for module reloading.

There are ways other than Apache to host Python application, including the CherryPy server, Paste Server, Zope, Twisted, and Tornado.

However, unless you have a specific reason not to use it (an since you are coming from presumably an Apache/PHP shop), I would highly recommed mod_wsgi on Apache. I know that Django recommends modwsgi on Apache and most of the other major Python frameworks will work on modwsgi.