The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.30, 7.4.23 and 8.0.10 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
Over the next three weeks, we’ll be updating the MariaDB (MySQL) database server software on all our servers from the MariaDB 10.3 series to the MariaDB 10.5 series (equivalent to the Oracle MySQL 8.0 series).
The MariaDB/MySQL database stores pages for WordPress and other sites that are run by scripts. Customers should not notice any difference after this change; we’re upgrading it to a more recent version simply to make sure it’s as fast, reliable and secure as possible. We’ve been using the new version on internal and test servers for some time.
At the moment the software is updated on a server, WordPress and other database-backed sites on that server will have 30-60 seconds of unavoidable “downtime”. To minimize the impact of that, we do these upgrades only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights between 9 PM and midnight Pacific time (midnight-3 AM Eastern time). We expect this process to be complete on all servers by September 6.
Beyond that one-time brief interruption in service, customers should not notice any difference to how their site works, as we said. But as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble or questions.
Update 9:24 PM Pacific time September 5: This upgrade has been completed on all servers.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.4.22 and 8.0.9 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
Note that we still don’t recommend using the PHP 8.0 series in production, as it still has numerous compatibility issues with third-party software. PHP 8 is suitable only for testing and experimenting right now. Most customers should use PHP 7.4 instead.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.29, 7.4.21 and 8.0.8 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
Note that we still don’t recommend using the PHP 8.0 series in production, as it still has numerous compatibility issues with third-party software. PHP 8 is suitable only for testing and experimenting right now. Most customers should use PHP 7.4 instead.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.4.20 and 8.0.7 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
Note that we still don’t recommend using the PHP 8.0 series in production, as it still has numerous compatibility issues with third-party software. PHP 8 is suitable only for testing and experimenting right now. Most customers should use PHP 7.4 instead.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.28, 7.4.19 and 8.0.6 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
Note that we still don’t recommend using the PHP 8.0 series in production, as it still has numerous compatibility issues with third-party software. PHP 8 is suitable only for testing and experimenting right now. Most customers should use PHP 7.4 instead.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
We recently heard from a couple of customers who set up Gmail to “Send mail as” a different email address at their custom domain name many years ago, and who are now having problems sending mail to people who use Outlook.com for their mail service (the messages were wrongly being flagged as spam at Outlook).
If this happens to you, it’s because the way Gmail used to set this up doesn’t interact well with modern email providers. The way they send these messages makes it look like a “spam forgery” to providers like Outlook.com that check for DKIM and SPF.
You can easily solve this by deleting the address in Gmail, then re-adding it. (If you’re one of our customers, the “Using Gmail to send messages” section of this page on our website shows the settings to use at Gmail.) Google will then set it up in a better way that works with modern email providers.
Read the rest of this entry »The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.27, 7.4.16 and 8.0.3 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0 series on our servers as a result.
Note that we still don’t recommend using the PHP 8.0 series in production, as it still has numerous compatibility issues with third-party software. PHP 8 is suitable only for testing and experimenting right now. Most customers should use PHP 7.4 instead.
These changes should not be noticeable, but as always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
WordPress 5.7 was recently released, and as always, we’ve updated our WordPress one-click installer to automatically install the latest version for new WordPress sites. WordPress 5.7 works fine on our servers (make sure you’re using a recent version of PHP for your site).
If you’ve previously installed an older version of WordPress, you should update it from within your WordPress Dashboard.
Recently, Microsoft announced that their “Microsoft Exchange” email server software has several security bugs that allow “hackers” to infect it with malware. That allows the “hackers” to read private email.
Some customers have asked us whether our servers are vulnerable to this problem.
The good news is that we don’t use Microsoft Exchange (or any other Microsoft email server) software, and never have. That means our servers, and our customers who use our email services, are not vulnerable to this problem at all.
