I ran into an issue in the last couple of days on NameCheap.com Shared Hosting while using the WordPress Plugin named backwpup.

I noticed that the last few days backups have given the following warning:

shell_exec() has been disabled for security reasons

After sending a ticket to tech support I was told that I needed to add a php.ini file to my webspace.   In this file I would need to add the following:

disable_functions=””

I added the php.ini to the webroot of my site, in this case the /public_html/ folder of my account.

Upon checking in my WordPress admin, I was still seeing the same issue, so I responded to the support ticket and was informed that I would need to add a comment to my .htaccess file, as follows:

suPHP_ConfigPath public_html

This again did not work, so I added the full path:

suPHP_ConfigPath /home/adkscree/public_html

Doing this has fixed the shell_exec() errors I was seeing in the site.   I hope this helps if you are seeing the same issues.

This code is also available on Pastebin.com, pastebin.com/cS71HSdy