10:16 AM Pacific time January 10: The problem described below has been fixed by Cogent Communications, and we are no longer detecting any packet loss. There should be no further problems. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you still have any trouble.
9:54 AM Pacific time January 10: We’re receiving scattered reports of intermittent problems when connecting to our servers, although all services on our end are working normally.
Some of our customers are still using the PHP 5.3 series, even though it’s obsolete and not recommended.
We’ve “rebuilt” the old PHP 5.3.29 software to patch a serious security bug it contains. This bug is the partial cause of a recent Joomla security problem.
The rebuilt version will be deployed on all our servers within the next few hours. No changes should be noticeable, but in the unlikely event you experience any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The PHP developers recently released version 7.0.1 that fixes several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 7.0 on our servers as a result.
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:
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.
As we mentioned in a previous post, our customers can now test the next major update to PHP, version 7.0, which is almost twice as fast as the current PHP 5.6. (There is no PHP version 6: That project was abandoned by the PHP authors.)
Today we updated the test version on our servers from 7.0.0RC6 to the latest 7.0.0RC7.
The PHP developers recently released version 5.6.15 that fixes several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.6 on our servers as a result.
As we mentioned in a previous post, our customers can now test the next major update to PHP, version 7.0, which is almost twice as fast as the current PHP 5.6. (There is no PHP version 6: That project was abandoned by the PHP authors.)
Today we updated the test version on our servers from 7.0.0RC5 to the latest 7.0.0RC6. This updated version also includes support for the ImageMagick extension, making it functionally complete.
Between 9:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Friday October 30 2015, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be upgraded from version 5.5.44 to 5.5.46. This will cause an approximately 60 second interruption of service on each MySQL-using customer Web site at some point during this period.
This upgrade is necessary for security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Update 10:25 PM Pacific time: The maintenance was completed as planned and all services are running normally.
The PHP developers are about to release a major update to PHP, version 7.0.
The main new feature (as far as most of our customers will be concerned) is vastly improved performance. Our testing shows it can run WordPress sites around twice as quickly, lowering the site’s CPU resource usage significantly. Sites that use it will be able to handle close to twice as many visitors per second.
Although a “stable” version of PHP 7 has not yet officially been released, a “release candidate” preview version is available, and we’ve installed that on our servers for customers who want to test it.
The PHP developers recently released versions 5.5.30 and 5.6.14 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.5 and 5.6 on our servers as a result.
