Category Archives: Announcements

PHP 8.2 Now Available

We’re pleased to announce that PHP 8.2 (8.2.2) is now available on all of our servers. You can easily change the PHP version per cPanel account via the “Select PHP Version” option in cPanel.

PHP 8.2 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as:

The full change log for version 8.2 can be found on PHP’s website here and the migration guide is also available. Please consult these for a detailed list of new features and backward incompatible changes. For third party applications, it’s best to confirm that they support PHP 8.2 before making the switch. However, if you run into any issues you can quickly and easily revert back to your prior version.

We now offer secure versions of PHP 5.4 through 8.2 which are all easily selectable from within cPanel. Version 8.0 remains the default for all new cPanel accounts while existing accounts will continue to retain their prior settings.

Imunify360 Now Available

We are pleased to announce that the Imunify360 security suite is now installed across all of our servers. We evaluated this product for some time and after an extended period of testing we are very confident in its ability to better protect our servers and our clients.

Security has always been at the forefront of our minds and Imunify360 has helped us to take this to the next level. Here are just a few things that Imunify360 provides:

  • Faster, real-time malware scanning – Each file is scanned almost as quickly as it is written. Malware uploaded via the cPanel file manager can even be blocked in real time.
  • Advanced Web Application Firewall – This helps to stop web application attacks before they even reach your website. From known vulnerabilities to more general protection, the WAF examines all traffic to your website for malicious requests.
  • Proactive Defense – Imunify360 is able to detect and block malicious code in real time as it is being executed. Malicious code is often hidden or fetched remotely and Proactive Defense is able to stop this activity in its tracks before it causes harm.
  • Automatic Cleanup – In many cases, Imunify360 is able to remove injected malware from infected files automatically. This is particularly useful for those moving their sites from another host where they may have been previously compromised.

While many of these functionalities were already present on our servers to a degree, Imunify360 has further improved upon these and added even greater security with a focus on prevention. Preventing issues before they occur allows you to better focus your time and resources where they are needed.

PHP 8.1 Now Available

We’re pleased to announce that PHP 8.1 (8.1.2) is now available on all of our servers. You can easily change the PHP version per cPanel account via the “Select PHP Version” option in cPanel.

PHP 8.1 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as:

Additional information concerning the version 8.1 release can be found on PHP’s website here and the migration guide is also available. Please consult these for a detailed list of new features and backward incompatible changes. For third party applications, it’s best to confirm that they support PHP 8.1 before making the switch. However, if you run into any issues you can quickly and easily revert back to your prior version.

Please note that only a limited number of extensions are currently available for PHP 8.1. We will continue to make new ones available as soon as they are offered. We now offer secure versions of PHP 5.4 through 8.1 which are all easily selectable from within cPanel. Version 8.0 is now the default for all new cPanel accounts while existing accounts will continue to retain their prior settings.

Beta: Dathorn WordPress Scanner

WordPress is not only the most popular script that we host, it is also most frequently targeted by attackers. While critical vulnerabilities in the WordPress core are relatively rare, they are fairly common in plugins and themes. It is important that these items are always kept updated to help prevent a compromise.

This can be a confusing process because the WP admin interface may not accurately portray certain situations. For example, if you’ve installed a plugin or theme outside of the WordPress repository, it may always show no updates being available even though that is not the case. The WP admin interface also doesn’t warn when something hasn’t received an update in a while, indicating it may no longer be actively maintained. These are both scenarios that require special attention but are easily overlooked.

Further, if a WordPress is compromised due to a vulnerability it can be very difficult to get the site back online in a secure state. Typically, we recommend a complete fresh re-install because there is no easy way to tell what attackers may have modified or left behind. Last modified dates on files can’t even be trusted once an account has been compromised. Continue reading →

Our New Client Portal!

Back in March, we refreshed our website and blog, making them responsive and far more mobile friendly. Since then, we’ve be revamping are administrative panel and now finally our client portal. It’s taken longer than we had hoped due to all of the server upgrades taking priority but we’re now very excited to unveil our freshly updated client portal! Below is just a quick comparison of the login pages on iOS.

All of the prior functionality within the portal is still present and organized much the same so it will be very familiar. We’re hoping to add a few more features in the coming months. If you have a moment, we’d love to get your feedback either here on our blog or in a ticket.

Server Upgrades Coming Soon!

As many of you know, we like to freshen up our servers from time to time. While some hosts will leave older hosting accounts on legacy hardware until it is nearly failing, we prefer to keep all clients on the latest iteration of our server hardware. This provides consistency across our fleet of servers and gives our clients the best possible experience. Dealing with old, failing hardware is just as a problematic for us as it is for our clients so we do our best to avoid these situations.

The new servers will have faster hardware across the board from the CPUs to RAM and SSDs. Some software updates will occur as well, starting with the OS as CloudLinux 7 will now be the default for all of our hosting servers. Currently, some of our systems are running CloudLinux 6 with their hybrid kernel. We will also be deploying MariaDB 10.3 on all servers (versus 10.1 currently). I know a few of you have been eagerly awaiting the Recursive CTE and Window Function support. Lastly, we’ll also be adding support for CloudLinux’s Node.js selector once all of the upgrades and migrations have settled down.

We expect to begin these server migrations towards the middle of June, with the first batch of notifications going out here very soon. All migrations will be completed by the end of July. You can expect to receive a ticket notification approximately two weeks before your server’s scheduled migration. There will be no downtime during this process and no changes should be necessary on your end as long as you’re using our DNS. If you have any questions meanwhile, please feel free to submit a ticket and we’ll gladly assist in any way that we can.

PHP 7.3 Now Available!

PHP 7.3 was released early this month and is now available on all of our servers! As with prior versions, you can easily change the PHP version per cPanel account via the “Select PHP Version” option in cPanel.

PHP 7.3.0 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as:

The migration guide is available in the PHP Manual. Please consult it for the detailed list of new features and backward incompatible changes. For 3rd party applications, it’s best to confirm that they support PHP 7.3 before making the switch. However, if you run into any issues you can quickly and easily revert back to your prior version.

Python & Ruby Selectors Now Available!

We’re excited to announce that we now support Python and Ruby applications across all of our hosting platforms! These have been popular feature requests and we’re happy to be able to announce their availability. These capabilities are made possible by CloudLinux’s Python & Ruby Selector as well as LiteSpeed’s mod_passenger support. Similar to the PHP Selector, Python and Ruby applications can be deployed directly via cPanel under the Software section as seen below.

If you select “Setup Python App”, you’ll be prompted to select your desired Python version, the app’s directory, and the app’s web address (URI). Currently, Python versions 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 are available. Continue reading →

Upgraded Hosting Plans

We’re very excited to announce that on Monday, June 4th, we upgraded all of our hosting plans once again. All plans now include 50% more disk space and bandwidth than before, which can be seen on our website. This change applies to both new and existing clients free of charge. The additional resources are available for you to allocate via your WHM account effective immediately.

No compromises have been made to offer these additional resources. Our network connectivity continues to be of the same high quality and all data remains on pure SSD RAID 10 arrays. We hope that you’re able to use these additional resources to better serve your own clients and continue growing!

Billing Migration

Over the next few months we will be migrating all clients to our new billing system that is now built-in to our existing portal. This will eliminate the need for you to login to a separate billing system to view invoices, update your credit card information, etc. All of this will now be easily accessible from within our portal.

You will receive an email and ticket notification with further details once your account has been migrated. The first batch of migrations were completed yesterday and another batch will go out around the 21st of each month until every client has been migrated. We expect this to take approximately 4 months in total.

As part of this migration there are two important items to take note of:

  • Your credit card information will need to be re-entered. Your card information is currently, and will continue to be, stored in a very secure manner that cannot be retrieved. As such, it cannot be migrated automatically and you’ll need to login to our portal to re-enter it once you receive a migration notification.
  • Texas residents will now pay sales tax as required. For the past several years we’ve been paying this out-of-pocket because our old billing system couldn’t properly accommodate this.

We greatly appreciate your cooperation and apologize for any inconvenience during this process. Ultimately this will be a vast improvement over our old, separate billing system. If you have any questions or concerns about this migration please submit a ticket via our portal and we’ll be happy to address them. We just wanted to post this quick update so that you would not be caught off guard or worried about phishing when the time comes for your account to be migrated.