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.
We’re upgrading our servers from Debian Linux version 9 (codename “stretch”) to version 10 (codename “buster”). We’ll be finishing that process over the next couple of weeks.
Your website and email should continue working as they always have, and we don’t expect any downtime. However, if you do have any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Although the final steps of the upgrade modify hundreds of software packages on the server, we’ve tested it extensively and don’t expect most customers to notice any change. (We’ve already been using the newer version of Debian for our own servers.)
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The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.26, 7.4.14 and 8.0.1 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.
If you’ve had trouble sending to Gmail addresses today or yesterday (December 14 or 15), where an address that you know is valid bounces back with “The email account that you tried to reach does not exist”, the problem isn’t you, or us. Gmail had a problem that caused this for all senders, seen on their status pages yesterday and today, with the latter confirming “Affected users received a bounce notification with the error “The email account that you tried to reach does not exist” after sending an email to addresses ending in @gmail.com”.
They also confirmed it on Twitter:
They say the problem is resolved now, so if it happened to you, it should work if you try sending again.
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.
The PHP developers have released a major update to PHP, version 8.0. We’ve installed it on our servers for customers who want to test it.
It’s so new that many scripts are still incompatible with it, including all versions of WordPress before the recent WordPress 5.6, so most people should not use it yet. In addition, it does not yet support the ImageMagick extension (but the more standard GD works fine), nor does it yet support ionCube Loader.
If you want to try it anyway:
- Login to our My Account control panel
- Click PHP Settings
- Choose PHP 8.0 series and click Save Settings.
Keep in mind that we consider PHP 8 to be only experimental for now; if you have any trouble at all, we recommend you simply switch back to PHP 7.4 in our control panel.
WordPress 5.6 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 5.6 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.
The PHP developers recently released versions 7.3.25 and 7.4.13 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded the PHP 7.3 and 7.4 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.
(By the way, if you’re wondering about support for the brand new PHP 8.0: that isn’t yet available because many things are still incompatible with it, but we do plan to support it in the future.)
If you use the Mozilla Thunderbird email program, and it won’t retrieve mail after updating to the latest Thunderbird version 78, this can be caused by a bug in the “ESET Internet Security” (or “Smart Security”) firewall/antivirus program.
In particular, if you use ESET and Thunderbird just hangs with a message saying “checking mail server capabilities”, ESET is almost certainly the cause. There are several threads on their forums about it ([1], [2]), and it’s not related to our servers — Thunderbird 78 works fine with our servers in general.
If this problem is happening to you, ESET has a page explaining how to workaround the bug and get Thunderbird working again.
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).
