Today is World Backup Day! If you’re not backing up your own computer and devices, today’s the perfect day to start doing it; that page has advice.
Do you ever wonder how companies like ours handle backups? It’s a good question. Our customers trust us with lots of data — email, websites, and more. It’s important that we keep that data (and our own data) safe. We do that with a 4-3-2-1 backup policy:
- There are always at least 4 copies of the data;
- The data is stored on at least 3 different physical servers;
- The servers are in at least 2 separate physical locations;
- At least 1 copy of the data is always physically disconnected from power and the Internet (“air gapped”).
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We’ve traditionally used our blog for notifications about our system status, but we’ve now added a more modern status page, at www.tigertechstatus.net. It shows any problems, outages, or planned maintenance.
We recommend that you bookmark the page in your web browser so you can check it even if you can’t reach our main site for some reason. (It’s hosted by a third party, so it will be available even if there’s a problem with our services.) You can use the Get Updates button in the top of that page to subscribe to status updates by email, Slack, Microsoft Teams or RSS feeds.
For the last few months, we’ve had a new webmail interface available for our customers, but we hadn’t yet made it the default if you click “Webmail” at the top of our pages.
Starting today, the new interface is the default when you click that link. If you don’t like the new webmail system for some reason, the old webmail system is also still available from a link on the new login screen (and will remain available for the foreseeable future).
We have some tips for using the new system, which has more flexible message composing, the ability to drag-and-drop images and other attachments, a simpler mobile interface, and a generally more modern feel.
For the last few months, we’ve been publicly testing a new webmail interface for our customers. The new system has more flexible message composing, the ability to drag-and-drop images and other attachments, a simpler mobile interface, and a generally more modern feel.
Today, we’ve updated the software to (among other changes) add a new “Dark” theme you can choose, and also to improve the message view in “two column” layout. You can now switch between a “split” and a “full height” view by clicking the new zoom icon (shown here circled in green):
You can find the new webmail interface at https://webmail.tigertech.net/, and we have some tips for using it. (By the way, if you don’t see the new features immediately, you may need to logout and login again, or clear the cache in your web browser.)
We intend to make the new interface the default soon. But if you don’t like the new webmail system for some reason, the old webmail system is also still available (and will remain available for the foreseeable future).
We’ve started publicly testing an updated webmail interface for our customers. The new system has more flexible message composing, the ability to drag-and-drop images and other attachments, a simpler mobile interface, and a generally more modern feel.
You can try it yourself at https://webmail.tigertech.net/, and we have some tips for using it.
We consider it in “beta test” for now and it probably still has some bugs, although we’ve been using it ourselves for several weeks of testing. If you have any trouble, the existing webmail system is also still available.
We’ve previously added free wildcard Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for all our customers who use our web hosting service. Now we’ve added free certificates to all “parked” domain names, too!
If you have a parked domain name on our servers that’s set up to redirect to another site, you can now use https:// URL addresses for the parked domain name and the redirect will work securely, with no problems.
We’ve supported IPv6 on customer websites for many years, but it didn’t default to “on”: customers had to explicitly enable it in our account management control panel.
Starting today, IPv6 is on by default for all new accounts signed up with us (although you can turn it off if you want).
In addition, we’re beginning a gradual process of slowly enabling IPv6 for existing sites if they haven’t chosen to disable it. If you don’t want IPv6 to be enabled for your site in the future, you should use our control panel to disable it.
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The authors of the PHP scripting language stopped supporting the PHP 5.3 and PHP 5.4 series some time ago.
Newer versions of PHP are generally more secure, have fewer bugs, and in some cases run far faster. Of course, that’s really just another way of saying that older versions of PHP are insecure, buggy, and slow.
Because of that, we are phasing out PHP versions earlier than 5.5 (we also offer the 5.6 and 7.0 series):
- New customers can no longer choose the old versions.
- We’ll start sending reminders to customers who use the old versions, asking them to upgrade.
We have a page dedicated to explaining how, and why, to update PHP.
Our hosting customers can now get free SSL certificates to secure their site.
What’s an SSL certificate? It activates the “padlock” icon for your site in a Web browser, showing that the connection is encrypted for security. You should use an SSL certificate if your visitors type sensitive data such as usernames, passwords or credit card numbers, because it ensures that “hackers” can’t intercept that data.
SSL certificates used to cost a lot of money, but an organization called Let’s Encrypt is now providing them for free, trying to encourage the widespread use of encryption on the modern Internet.
We believe that encryption should be widely available, so we’ve changed our SSL certificate system to provide free Let’s Encrypt certificates to our hosting customers. You can get one now in our “My Account” control panel.
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The PHP developers recently released PHP version 7.0.0, as well as an update to the 5.6 series, version 5.6.16. We’ve upgraded PHP on our servers as a result.
The official release of PHP 7 means we’ll start encouraging customers to use it (as long as they use modern scripts like current versions of WordPress). It’s almost twice as fast as old versions of PHP. Yes, really: Twice as fast. We’re using it ourselves on this blog.
If you’d like your WordPress or other PHP-based site to seem snappier, or be able to handle twice as many visitors per second, you can easily do so:
- Login to our My Account control panel
- Click PHP Settings
- Click PHP 7.0 series
- Click Save Settings
Then test your site to make sure it works properly. If it does: Great, you’ve just made your site much faster! If it doesn’t, it’s probably because you’re using older scripts that haven’t yet been updated, and you can simply set PHP back to an earlier version for now. We recommend that you always use the latest version that works properly with your scripts.
As always, if you have any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
