MediaTemple is a great hosting company. They give you access to all the tools you need, especially when using a DV server, and they have awesome, responsive support.

Unfortunately, their KnowledgeBase guides are a bit…outdated…and occasionally not 100% correct. It can leave you going “DERP! I did that! Why you no work!?”

Obviously, this occurred for me recently, which is why I’m making this post!

My mission was a simple one: to enable PHP Error Reporting / Notices on a test server.

I tried the usual — adding an override tag at the top of the PHP page being tested. No worky.

Then I tried the HTACCESS method that is suggested throughout their entire website. No worky.

Clearly, something was overriding my overrides. And what was it? The settings in the Plesk panel!

It’s easy enough to find.

Go to … Website & Domains Tab -> Click on the domain in question at the bottom of the screen -> PHP Settings Tab -> error_reporting section

There is a dropdown here that is set to “default”. Change it to: E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE — which results in the value of “-2057” being used.

I’m sure many of you are going “duh”…But, well…duh yourself!