Blog

PHP 8.4 is available on all servers

PHP 8.4 is now available on servers managed by ServerPilot. Learn about the improvements, changes, new features, and deprecations in PHP 8.4.

Faster page loads with HTTP/3

ServerPilot now supports HTTP/3, the latest version of the HTTP protocol. HTTP/3 speeds up data transfer to make pages load faster. The speedup from HTTP/3 is especially noticeable for browsers on unreliable networks with high packet loss, like mobile devices.

Advanced metrics for WordPress and PHP hosting

ServerPilot's new monitoring dashboards include extensive metrics that give you a deep and practical understanding of your servers and the WordPress and PHP apps you're hosting. With metrics ranging from MySQL cache status to per-app PHP memory usage, along with built-in explanations of all charts, you can quickly identify code problems, performance issues, and resource limitations that are impossible to see otherwise. #

Announcing support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

We're happy to announce support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat"). Ubuntu releases a Long-Term Support (LTS) version every two years. Ubuntu LTS releases are enterprise-grade and receive security updates from Ubuntu for five years. For 24.04, that means security updates through 2029.

PHP 8.3 is available on all servers

We’re excited to announce that PHP 8.3 is now available on servers managed by ServerPilot. Learn about the improvements, changes, new features, and deprecations in PHP 8.3.

PHP 8.2 is available on all servers

Today we’re excited to announce that PHP 8.2 is now available on all ServerPilot servers. There are many changes, new features, and notable deprecations with the release of PHP 8.2.

Announcing support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

We're happy to announce support for Ubuntu 22.04 ("Jammy Jellyfish"). This latest Ubuntu Long Term Support version was released April 21, 2022. Ubuntu does a Long-Term Support (LTS) release every two years. Ubuntu LTS releases are enterprise-grade and receive security updates from Ubuntu for five years. For 22.04, that means security updates through 2027.

PHP 8.1 is available on all servers

PHP 8.1 was recently released and has been rolled out to all ServerPilot servers. PHP 8.1 includes several new features, as well as some performance improvements.

EarlyDog: your dedicated Ops Team

We’re thrilled to announce EarlyDog, our fully managed cloud hosting service. With EarlyDog’s managed cloud, you get a dedicated team of engineers who expertly manage and monitor your hosting on Google Cloud using both automated tools and their own expertise.

PHP 8.0 is available on all servers

PHP 8.0, officially released today, introduces breaking changes to the PHP language. These changes are a necessary step in making the PHP language easier and more enjoyable to use.

Introducing SSH public key management

We're excited to announce SSH public key management through ServerPilot. Once you've added your SSH key to a system user, you'll be able to SSH and SFTP into your server using public key authentication.

Announcing support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

We're happy to announce immediate support for Ubuntu 20.04 ("Focal Fossa"). This latest Ubuntu Long Term Support version was released today. Ubuntu does a Long-Term Support (LTS) release every two years. Ubuntu LTS releases are enterprise-grade and receive security updates from Ubuntu for five years. For 20.04, that means security updates through 2023.

Let's Encrypt CAA rechecking bug

ServerPilot has re-issued all certificates affected by Let's Encrypt's recently identified CAA record rechecking bug. Let's Encrypt, the world's most popular SSL certificate provider, is used by ServerPilot to issue free AutoSSL certificates.

ServerPilot is not vulnerable to PHP-FPM CVE-2019-11043

ServerPilot users are not at risk from the recently discovered PHP-FPM vulnerability (CVE-2019-11043). The server configuration ServerPilot uses prevents the vulnerability from being exploitable. As always, ServerPilot automatically updated all servers with the latest PHP versions that fix the vulnerability.

PHP 7.4 is available on all servers

We're happy to announce the release candidate of PHP 7.4 is now available on all servers. PHP 7.4 brings many new syntax features to the PHP language while at the same time continuing to boost the speed of PHP 7. There are also a few deprecations developers should be aware of as the PHP language is cleaned up in preparation for a future PHP 8.

Discontinuing PHP 5.6

PHP 5.6 is past end-of-life. Starting this week, ServerPilot will no longer install PHP 5.6 on newly connected servers. PHP 5.6 will continue to work normally on any server where it is already installed. Through the end of this year, you can contact ServerPilot support for assistance installing PHP 5.6 on new servers.

Announcing PayPal support

We're happy to announce the addition of PayPal as a payment option. You can now add credit to your account using PayPal. You'll see this new payment option on your account's billing page.

PHP 7.3 is available on all servers

We're happy to announce the release candidate of PHP 7.3 is now available on all servers. PHP 7.3 brings still more speed improvements to PHP 7, including a faster garbage collector. Additionally, PHP 7.3 includes further cleanup to PHP syntax and function behavior, making the lives of PHP developers easier.

Adding TLS 1.3 and removing early TLS versions

Recently, the TLS 1.3 specification was finalized and OpenSSL 1.1.1 was released with support for TLS 1.3. In the next week, we'll be updating Nginx on all servers to support TLS 1.3. At the same time, we'll be removing support for early TLS versions (1.0 and 1.1) that are now considered insecure or weak.

Announcing support for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

We're happy to announce immediate support for Ubuntu 18.04 (code named "Bionic Beaver"). This latest Ubuntu LTS version was released a few hours ago.

Discontinuing PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5

In the coming weeks, we'll be ending support for PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5 on new servers. These PHP versions are very outdated and no longer receive security updates from the developers of PHP. Existing servers will continue to support PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5.

Drupal remote code execution vulnerability CVE-2018-7600

The Drupal Security Team has announced a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability in Drupal that was identified by Jasper Mattsson. If you use Drupal, you must upgrade your Drupal installations or else your apps will likely be compromised. For users with vulnerable Drupal apps, we've sent you an email with details of which apps are vulnerable and need to be upgraded.

Thank you, Let's Encrypt! ServerPilot is now a sponsor.

Even before the first line of ServerPilot's code was written, we'd dreamed of giving developers the ability to issue and deploy SSL certificates with the click of a button. We'd talked to Certificate Authorities, but all we found were inadequate APIs and high prices. However, that all changed in November 2014 when Let's Encrypt announced their intention to create a free Certificate Authority built entirely around an API. Given the amazing people working on Let's Encrypt, we knew our dreams were about to become reality.

WordPress design and development pricing survey results

'What will it cost to build my website?' It's the most common question that WordPress development and design companies have to answer. And it's also the hardest. Until now, there hasn't been a compelling, data-driven analysis of how much this type of work really costs. In early 2018, we ran a survey to try to answer this question.

Cloud providers rebooting for Meltdown and Spectre mitigations

As the recent Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities impacted all cloud providers, all cloud providers have needed to take action. Due to the complexity of these bugs in CPUs and slow responses from Intel and AMD, developing and testing mitigations has taken understandable time for most cloud providers. DigitalOcean and others are now deploying mitigations.

2018 WordPress development and design pricing survey

When it comes to WordPress development and design, cost is always top-of-mind, both for the agencies who build websites and for those who hire them. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a compelling, data-driven analysis of how much this type of work really costs.

PHP 7.2 is available on all servers

We're happy to announce the first release candidate of PHP 7.2 is available on all servers. PHP 7.2 brings even more speed improvements while adding great new security features such as the sodium cryptography extension and the Argon2i password hashing algorithm.

WP-CLI is available on all servers

If you use the command line and you love WordPress, your life just got easier. ServerPilot now installs WP-CLI by default on your servers. We've also rolled out WP-CLI to all existing servers.

CVE-2017-6074 Linux kernel DCCP vulnerability

A Linux kernel vulnerability allowing privilege escalation has been found that affects most major Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. The fix for this vulnerability, identified by CVE-2017-6074, has been applied to all servers managed by ServerPilot.

Introducing two-factor authentication

ServerPilot now supports two-factor authentication. For users wishing to add another layer of security to their account, using two-factor authentication is a great way to do it.

CVE-2016-8655 Linux kernel vulnerability

A Linux kernel vulnerability allowing privilege escalation has been found that affects most major Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. The fix for this vulnerability, identified by CVE-2016-8655, has been applied to all servers managed by ServerPilot.

PHP 7.1 is available on all servers

We're happy to announce the first release candidate of PHP 7.1 is available on all servers. PHP 7.1 keeps the speed and memory efficiency of PHP 7.0 while adding many great new language features.

Brotli compression algorithm enabled on all servers

For apps using HTTPS, page loads are now even faster. On all servers managed by ServerPilot, we've enabled the new Brotli compression algorithm developed by Google. Brotli is currently supported by Chrome and Firefox for HTTPS requests.

HTTPoxy vulnerability

A vulnerability named HTTPoxy affecting many PHP applications has been discovered. The vulnerability allows a malicious request to control an environment variable named HTTP_PROXY that some PHP libraries use. The fix for this vulnerability has already been applied to all servers managed by ServerPilot.

Free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt

We're truly excited to announce that ServerPilot now offers easy, unlimited, free SSL certificates to users on our Coach and Business plans. By making SSL deployment absurdly simple, we're continuing to empower our users to focus valuable time and energy on your businesses and projects.

DROWN SSL vulnerability

A recent vulnerability named DROWN (CVE-2016-0800) affecting the SSLv2 protocol has been discovered and is in the news. This vulnerability does not affect servers managed by ServerPilot.

HTTP/2 enabled on all servers

All servers managed by ServerPilot now support HTTP/2, the latest version of the HTTP protocol. HTTP/2 solves many fundamental performance limitations that existed in HTTP/1.x and can result in page load speedups of up to 50 percent.

PHP 7.0 is available on all servers

If you've been excitedly watching the development of PHP 7 like we have, you've been looking forward to this day for more than a year. Today, PHP 7.0 RC1 was released. This is the first release candidate for PHP 7.0 and marks the end of beta for PHP 7. With this release, we're proud to announce that PHP 7.0 is now available on all servers.

Logjam TLS attack

Security researchers have discovered a new attack on the TLS protocol named Logjam. Additionally, the researchers found that commonly used values that are part of the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic key exchange used by TLS may be vulnerable to attack by very powerful entities like nation-states.

GHOST glibc vulnerability

A vulnerability named GHOST (CVE-2015-0235) affecting the GNU C library (glibc) has been discovered. This vulnerability does not affect Ubuntu 14.04. Only ServerPilot users with Ubuntu 12.04 servers had the vulnerable version of glibc. As neither OpenSSH, Nginx, Apache, MySQL, or Postfix are considered vulnerable, there is low risk to your servers managed by ServerPilot. One potential risk is through PHP scripts that call the function gethostbyname() with user-supplied input as the argument.

SSLv3 disabled due to POODLE vulnerability

Security researchers at Google recently announced their discovery of a flaw in Version 3 of the SSL protocol ("SSLv3"). The attack, called POODLE ("Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption"), can be exploited by attackers who are able to modify network transmissions between the browser and the server. A successful attack can result in, for example, an attacker being able to read the cookies sent by a browser over an SSL (HTTPS) request.

Bash Shellshock security update

Yesterday, a serious Bash shell vulnerability named Shellshock (CVE-2014-6271 / CVE-2014-7169) was announced. Updates to your servers were applied as soon as they became available.

ServerPilot API released

Over the past few months, we've been putting the finishing touches on our API. In that time, beta users of our API have been giving us feedback, writing API wrappers, and even building businesses on top of our API. We're very excited to announce our API is now available to everyone.

OpenSSL Heartbleed security update

Yesterday, the OpenSSL Project released an update to address CVE-2014-0160, a vulnerability nicknamed "Heartbleed." This vulnerability affects many applications and services including ServerPilot, DigitalOcean, Amazon AWS, and others.