WA hosting Updates [Malware, Plesk, WordPress]
Hi WA!
Congratulations, your website is malware free! All websites have been cleaned of malicious code placed there by various hacking attempts that are taking place on the web right now.
WA Hosting is Safe
We have spent the last 10 days upgrading our security and configurations across the WA hosting network to first ensure that hackers cannot get in through Wordpress plugins or themes. This took quite a while for us to fix because we first had to determine how these plugins and themes were being attacked.Securing the Network Infrastructure
There are many things that a hosting company can do to be secure, usually the more secure you are, the less functionality you can offer your clients. With WordPress we had our hands tied because we needed to allow WA members the same wordpress freedom that they expect to have. Adding new themes, plugins, modifying your styles, etc. This required some tricky configurations to keep the network secure, but we nailed it!Known Security Holes - Plesk Control Panel
While we were hardening security on our servers we noticed some glaring holes in Plesk. Kyle and I were forced with a decision to make. Allow members to still access Plesk but leave some vulnerabilities open (known issues with Plesk). Or close plesk to provide a much more secure network. We chose safety of course.
No Plesk Control Panel?
Plesk control panel is still disabled - it’s something we’ve been planning for a number of years actually. What we will be replacing it with is a much easier solution to:1 - Manage email addresses
2 - Manage Domain forwards
3 - Manage Databases
4 - Manage Backups
My Question has always been: What is Plesk really good for? There is really zero reason to log into plesk once you can do the above 4 points. In the very near future we will be rolling out this functionality so that plesk can be removed entirely. If you need to access your website files, do so via FTP using an FTP client (CoreFtp is free and it's great)
Setting up email addresses will take 2 seconds in the coming days when we release our new functionality on your WA Hosting dashboard. Forwarding domains will be next, followed by the ability to easily manage your Database using a solution like Phpmyadmin, or create a database.
Backups are also going to be made easy so that you can back up your entire website, database + files with the click of a button at any time.
These are the planned updates that are coming and we will be releasing them as soon as possible.
Upgrades to WordPress
We've upgraded wordpress within the WordPress Express website builder so that anyone that builds a new website at WA will have the latest version of WordPress installed.We know that at WA we offer the easiest solution to building websites and in the coming weeks we’re going to be adding to this with some great new updates and features for all who want to build websites without the hassle of the clunky installers that you find on ALL other web hosts.
Please let us know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.
Carson
Recent Comments
20
Looking forward to the updates. And yes WA does seem to evolve regularly. Being current and up to date is a truth within the loved WA. Thanxs!
I am glad for the updates, but I need to set up some new e-mails. Is it possible to set them up with the FTP client?
I am waiting for the same thing. I have spoken with them both and we have a better version of WA coming next week. No more Plesk but a much better email (and other) elements.
Email management is coming very soon. I'm just putting the finishing touches on the new interface. My team and I have been working on this all weekend as we realize the urgency of getting emails setup. We simply could not allow for potential security breaches to occur due to holes in Plesk.
What we replace plesk with will be easier, faster, and a lot less confusing. I will be blogging about the email management when it is live (soon).
Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for doing all these updates, and I'm pleased to hear the latest version of WP will always be installed now! I may be completely asking for something that's impossible here, but it would be great if Google Apps could be installed on domains hosted here in order to be able to use Gmail (and their other service) for the custom domains. I believe this is possible by changing MX records, which are currently un-editable... I know you can use Gmail with their POP3 checker, but it would be great to have native integration.
My technical knowledge of what's possible is pretty limited, so I could be completely mixing things up here...
Very much looking forward to the backups tool!
Mark
Gr8 Brains Carson Kyle, Kudos . Pls Carson is there any video webinar on how to install your WP from scratch.
That's great news Carson! WA is such an amazing and legitimate place to learn, I for one am glad to be a part of what you have here to learn and grow. I was reflecting last night and thought that some of the best minds in IM were people I met on this site a few years ago. Again, great work here and thanks for providing this quality service to us.
Hosting is something that we've dedicated ourselves to and it's really coming along well. One thing that we are missing is an "official" outline of what our hosting infrastructure offers. I think that most WA members will be surprised with the setup we have in comparison to other "Vanilla" hosting companies out there. We've got a great hosting network that we will continue integrating further into WA to make it easier for members to realize the benefits. Thanks for the comment - onwards and upwards!
See more comments
MEGA thanks yet again, Kyle and Carson! These constant surprises and upgrades you guys do at WA is AWESOME! You guys operate like a conglomerate:) Thanks again.