PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.20

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.20 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.19 to PHP 5.3.20 on our servers as a result.

Brief MySQL scheduled maintenance December 22 2012 (completed)

Between 11:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Saturday December 22 2012, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be upgraded to version 5.1.66 and restarted. This will cause an approximately 30 second interruption of service on each customer Web site at some point during this hour.

This upgrade is necessary for security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.

Update December 22 11:17 PM: The maintenance was completed with less than 30 seconds downtime per server.

PHP 5.2.17 available

In an earlier post, we described how we’re phasing out PHP 5.2.6 in favor of the newer PHP 5.3 series.

Our original intention was to remove the long-obsolete 5.2 series entirely. However, a small number of customers have told us they’re unable to update their scripts to work with PHP 5.3, usually because the script is more than five years old and no newer version is available.

To help these customers, we’re making an extra version of PHP available: version 5.2.17. That’s still an outdated version, but for technical reasons we’re able to support it for a while longer than PHP 5.2.6, giving customers at least six extra months — perhaps even longer — before PHP 5.3 is the oldest version available on our servers.

We still recommend that all customers use the PHP 5.3 series. However, if you’re unable to do that, you can now use our “My Account” control panel to choose PHP 5.2.17 instead:

1. Login to the “My Account” control panel.
2. Click PHP Settings.
3. Choose the Use PHP 5.2.17 option.
4. Click Save Settings.

Our previously announced schedule to remove PHP 5.2.6 still applies, except that PHP 5.2.6 customers will be switched to version 5.2.17 (instead of all the way to the 5.3 series) if they don’t upgrade to 5.3 themselves.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.19

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.19 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.18 to PHP 5.3.19 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.18

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.18 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.17 to PHP 5.3.18 on our servers as a result.

Upgrading to PHP 5.3

As described in a previous blog post, we’re removing the obsolete PHP version 5.2 from our servers. Our customers should only be using the newer PHP 5.3 series.

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PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.17

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.17 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.16 to PHP 5.3.17 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.16

Shortly after we made PHP 5.3.15 available to hosting customers, the PHP team announced the release of version 5.3.16 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.15 to PHP 5.3.16 on our servers as a result.

PHP 5.3.15 available

PHP 5.3.15 is now available on all hosting accounts. It’s the default for new customers, and existing customers can update their PHP version using the “PHP Settings” link in our “My Account” control panel.

If you’re an existing customer using an older version of PHP, we haven’t yet changed your PHP version. However, we will begin doing that in about 30 days (we’ll announce that separately), so we recommend that you upgrade now. That way, if you find you’re using an outdated PHP script that isn’t compatible, you can set PHP back to the previous version and work to update the script. The old PHP 5.2 series will be removed from our servers by the end of 2012.

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Network attacks July 26, 2012 (resolved)

Today at about 12:26 PM and 12:34 PM (Pacific time), our network was briefly attacked by an extremely high volume of data — a “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack using forged (“spoofed”) source addresses. The volume of the attack was more than 50 times greater than the usual peak inbound data rate to all our servers combined. This caused Web sites and e-mail we host to be very slow or timeout completely for a few minutes. (All services are working normally now.)

The same attack happened a week ago. Based on what we learned previously, we were able to trace the attack in more detail, and we have identified a specific controversial site that the attackers are targeting. We have moved that site to a different section of our network that can fail without affecting other sites, and we will work with the site owner to move it to a dedicated DDoS protection service.

We apologize for the problems caused by this incident. We know that achieving maximum uptime and availability is important for all of our customers.