PHP7 Coming Soon for Managed WordPress Hosting
-We are busy working on some major updates to our shared-hosting Managed WordPress Hosting & Support platform, which we’re calling MWP 2.0! (Managed WordPress 2.0)
We can’t provide all the details just yet, as we are still testing and finalising some features. However, we realise that many customers are getting desperate for PHP7 — well, I can confirm that PHP7 will be available in MWP 2.0!
There will also be many other exciting new features, but you’ll need to wait just a little longer to hear about those, but just to give you an idea, MWP 2.0 will be focussing on speed and security. PHP7 is a big part of the performance improvements we’ll be rolling out, as PHP7 alone will give your WordPress sites a serious speed boost.
Expect an official announcement in the next 4 – 6 weeks!
Now Accepting Payments via Stripe
-We are pleased to announce that we can now accept credit card payments via Stripe!
Stripe has recently launched in New Zealand and so we can now take advantage of their excellent service and features. Credit card payments to WP NET are now simple to set up and manage.
New customers can opt to pay by credit card at checkout and the payment will be processed by Stripe and the card details securely sent and stored with Stripe for re-billing as required.
With Stripe credit card payments, WP NET is able to bill customers on-demand and on a recurring basis, and we can bill varying amounts too, so there will be no more issues with recurring payments when you upgrade your account and your monthly amount due changes. This should be a huge relief to our customers who have experienced this issue with our previous payment processor.
Please note that credit card details are not stored within WP NET’s systems — all details are encrypted and securely transmitted to Stripe for processing and storage.
Over the next few weeks we will be migrating away from using 2CheckOut for existing recurring billing subscriptions, but we will be in contact with affected customers via email with instructions on how to transition over to using Stripe.
If any of our customers have questions or concerns regarding credit card payments, please open a support ticket and we’ll be happy to help.
FreeSSL now available in Managed Server Control Panel
-We’ve recently deployed an update to our Managed Cloud Server Control Panel that adds support for managing FreeSSL (Let’s Encrypt) Certificates from directly within the Control Panel.
This means that all our Managed Cloud Server customers can now instantly apply SSL Certificates to their sites with the click of button. With this new addition — and considering the performance and SEO benefits of running sites with SSL — we recommend that all Cloud Server sites run under SSL.
More information, and complete instructions for using the Cloud Server Control Panel are available in our WP NET KnowledgeBase.
Managed Cloud Server Control Panel Released
-We have exciting news today … our Cloud Server Control Panel is officially released and available now!
Our Managed Cloud Servers are built for speed and security. We have gone to considerable lengths to ensure that these servers are as lean as possible — and that includes the control panel. The software installed on the server is very light-weight and uses practically zero resources. As you would expect, all communication between the control panel and the server uses SSL / HTTPS.
We have intentionally made the interface as simple and uncluttered as possible. Most actions require only a few clicks.
In short: it’s fast, secure and easy to use. … continues
Introducing Improved Server Monitoring
-All-new systems monitoring service is now operational!
This is an internal monitoring service used by our support team to provide them with important systems status information and historical performance data for all of our servers and customers domains. This is a remote monitoring service that runs in conjunction with existing systems to provide us with detailed multi-node monitoring.
FreeSSL Now Available for Managed Server
-We’ve got a lot of exciting new features and updates to announce over the next few months, and first up is…
FreeSSL from Let’s Encrypt
now available to all Managed Cloud VPS customers!That’s right, all customers with WP NET Managed Cloud VPS servers can now use SSL on their websites at no cost! You never need to bother with generating CSR’s, processing renewals or installing certificates … ever! It’s all completely automated.
New and existing Managed Cloud VPS customers can start using FreeSSL right now. For details on how to activate FreeSSL on your Cloud VPS websites, please see our KnowledgeBase article. (Note: you must login to the My WP NET customer portal to view the article)
What is Let’s Encrypt?
Let’s Encrypt is a new SSL Certificate Authority on a mission to make encryption standard across the web. Let’s Encrypt is sponsored by industry, including: Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Sucuri, CISCO and more. You can read more about Let’s Encypt on their website.
In a nutshell, Let’s Encrypt provides browser-trusted SSL certificates completely free. Provisioning and renewal is automated via the Let’s Encrypt agent software installed on the host server.
You may be asking yourself …
Transitioning to .nz
-Like thousands of New Zealand businesses, WP NET is embracing the move to the shorter .nz TLD. We’ve had redirects in place for months, so that anyone arriving at wpnet.nz will be instantly redirected to wpnet.co.nz.
That’s all well and good, but we’ve decided it’s time to start making the move to .nz as the primary domain for all our websites and services. There’s a lot of changes we need to make so we’ll be doing it slowly and carefully over the next several weeks. We will of course ensure that redirects are in place, so you shouldn’t notice any difference or disruption.
Security Update – glibc
-There have been two critical security issues in recent days, which we wanted to bring to your attention.
Firstly, a serious vulnerability was discovered in the glibc library which is included in just about every Linux OS distribution. This was particularly concerning as 1) the vulnerability has existed since 2008(!) and 2) because the glibc library is so widespread, being used in Linux, smartphones, routers and all sorts of other devices. It could be sometime before some of these vulnerable devices are identified and patched. The bug is listed as CVE-2015-7547.
If you host with WP NET you can relax — we’ve already patched all our shared servers and Cloud Servers. … continues
More disk space for Cloud VPS Basic and Business plans
-Disk space is one of things you just can’t really have too much of. So, from today our Basic and Business Managed Cloud Server plans come standard with 25GB and 35GB respectively — that’s an additional 10GB at no extra cost. Of course, you can still customise your configuration and add as much disk space as you need.
Existing Managed Cloud VPS customers will have their servers upgraded over the coming weeks. We’ll let you know when this happens.
Our fully Managed Cloud VPS servers are custom built for large, resource intensive WordPress sites and are located right here in New Zealand. In additional to full stack server management you also get WordPress support from NZ’s WordPress Experts — WP NET.
If you have any questions about our Cloud VPS services, please just get in touch.
PHP 7 is here!
-The long-awaited release of PHP7 is finally here!
PHP 7 is a major milestone in the evolution of the PHP platform and brings with it large performance gains and improved resource efficiency.
This post on the Digital Ocean blog gives a great summary of what’s new and changed in PHP7.
Our Managed Cloud VPS customers can start using PHP 7 right away, it’s available immediately (alongside 5.6) to use with your WordPress installations. Just open a support ticket if you would like us to switch any of your Managed Cloud VPS WordPress installations over to PHP7.
In our initial tests with the release version of PHP7 on an Ubuntu Cloud VPS, we get ~40% page load reduction on WP Admin pages.
System Updates
System Updates