web design & development

PHP and MySQL Support in WordPress

Support for PHP 4 and MySQL 4 is to be dropped after the release of WordPress 3.1, due October 2010. Users without at least PHP 5.2 and MySQL 5.0.15 will then be able to upgrade to newer versions from WordPress 3.2 onwards.

Our hosting clients can rest assured that we already meet these minimum requirements and that their WordPress sites will continue to work with the expected future updates. If you're not sure whether your web hosting meets the stated minimum requirements you can install the Health Check plugin available from the WordPress Plugins Repository.

On a related note - it's expected that both Drupal and Joomla will also be adopting these same minimum standards with their new releases expected later this year.

WordPress 3

On June 17 Automattic proudly announced the release of WordPress 3, with 1,217 bug fixes and feature upgrades that have been worked on by a team of over 200 developers. Some of the key points to note are:

• WordPress and WordPress MU have been merge to bringe multi-site functionality to the general release version;
• A new custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets;
• New custom header and background APIs;
• The ability to set your own admin username and password during the installation process;
• A bulk update feature for themes and plugins;
• Updates to developer tools such as JQuery, Json, Scriptaculous and SWFobject.

As with all new releases containing security updates we strongly recommend that WordPress users on our servers upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible. And we make this a strict requirement where upgrading patches any security issue that could place other user accounts, or the entire server, at risk of attack. This requirement is also placed on any other off-the-shelf software, such as Joomla, CMSimple or Moveable Type.

Server Security

In order to keep the data on your server secure our firewall tracks the number of failed login attempts users make when accessing FTP, email, and control panels in order to prevent malicious logins. If you attempt to login with incorrect details too many times the firewall will block your current IP and you will no longer be able to access any site on the server, nor any service associated with any account.

In order to prevent this you must ensure that you only attempt to login with the correct details at all times. If you are blocked by the firewall you will need to contact us, or your reseller¹, and provide account details along with your IP number so that the block can lifted. Please note that we do not accept any liability for losses a user makes as a result of their getting themselves blocked from their account, and we advise resellers to similarly not accept any liability.

1. We will only respond directly to our own clients. If you have purchased hosting through a reseller then that reseller is your point of contact at all times and the reseller will contact us on your behalf. Please be aware that we will not make any exceptions to this rule, under any circumstances, as we have no means of verifying the identity of our resellers' clients.