With the year slowly coming to an end, we draw the curtains on yet another chapter in cPanel’s journey of offering added-value solutions that continue to lead the industry forward in web hosting management and security.

We already introduced some valuable innovations and enhancements, such as the introduction of Manage Team to further collaboration and control, or the addition of Two-Factor Authentication for Webmail to further strengthen security, which you can read about here.

However, the time has come to navigate through the latest added value solutions we brought to the table this year. So without further ado, let’s bid farewell to 2023 and recap cPanel’s added value solutions for you.

cPanel Forum – Migration to Support Portal

cPanel Community Forums has been integrated into the cPanel Support Portal with the aim to both simplify and streamline user support. This migration serves as a significant step forward for both platform and users to ensure a simplified user experience with a shared sense of community – a unified hub for knowledge sharing and support.

The integration offers a range of benefits, including a one-stop-shop for cPanel resources, continuity of familiar technical content, and the fostering of a stronger community overall. Aimed at simplifying communication, this move will make it easier for users to seek assistance, share experiences, and engage directly with the cPanel team.

Vulnerability Report – No Actions Required by Default

Sit back and relax, because the Zero Day Initiative was publicly disclosed, and although six vulnerabilities were identified, no action is required on your part.

That’s right, based on the latest risk assessment and understanding of defect reports, no further action is required from your side.

Let’s recap what we currently know about the Zero-Day vulnerabilities, disclosed through the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI):

CVE-2023–42115: Exim addressed issues specific to external authentication. When using cPanel Exim with the default settings, you are not vulnerable to this issue unless the ‘external’ authentication driver is explicitly enabled.

CVE-2023-42114 & CVE-2023-42116: Fixed vulnerabilities related to SPA (Secure Password Authentication) and NTLM (NT LAN Manager). By default, cPanel Exim is not vulnerable to these issues unless the ‘SPA’ authentication driver has been activated.

Comprehensive Guide to WordPress Website Development

Developing a WordPress website is a sequential process that requires careful planning, thoughtful execution, and consistent maintenance to ensure it meets the needs of users and achieves its intended goals. This involves a series of clearly defined stages, including planning, designing, content creation, optimisation, and ongoing maintenance. Each stage plays a crucial role in building a website that is not only visually appealing and functional but also secure, high-performing, and engaging for its target audience. By incorporating the right plugins and tools during these stages, you can effectively enhance your website’s capabilities and ensure that it delivers a seamless experience to its visitors.

Focus on these critical stages and leverage the recommended plugins to build a WordPress website that stands out in the competitive digital space and consistently delivers exceptional results.

• 
  What makes Fastdot.com such a great WordPress hosting provider:
  
  Fastdot.com specialises in WordPress hosting and is highly regarded for its streamlined installation processes, robust and secure infrastructure, and round-the-clock expert support. This makes it an excellent choice for both beginners and experienced developers looking to ensure a reliable hosting environment for their WordPress websites.
• 
  WordPress – Digital Experiences, Re-imagined:
  
  In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, WordPress has emerged as a powerful and versatile platform, serving as a cornerstone for creating innovative and adaptive digital experiences. Initially launched in 2003 as a straightforward blogging tool, WordPress has evolved into a comprehensive content management system (CMS) that powers over 40% of all websites worldwide, demonstrating its adaptability and scalability for various online applications.
• 
  How to Optimize Your Images to Speed Up WordPress:
  
  Image optimisation involves reducing the file size of images without compromising their visual quality. This process is essential for enhancing your website’s loading speed, which directly improves user experience and boosts your search engine rankings. Implementing effective image optimisation techniques can significantly enhance the overall performance of your WordPress site.
• 
  The Importance of WordPress Design:
  
  WordPress, which powers over 40% of websites globally, plays a pivotal role in shaping modern digital experiences. Whether you are building a personal blog, a corporate website, or a complex e-commerce platform, the design choices you make will directly influence user engagement, brand perception, and conversion rates, making thoughtful design an integral part of the development process.
• 
  MediaWiki on Fastdot: The Leading Australian Hosting Provider:
  
  MediaWiki is an open-source platform renowned for powering Wikipedia. It enables users to create, edit, and manage large-scale collaborative projects and knowledge bases. When hosted on Fastdot, users benefit from a reliable infrastructure, ensuring that their MediaWiki projects run smoothly and securely.
• 
  WordPress Hosting on Fastdot – Australia’s Leading Hosting Provider:
  
  Fastdot stands out as one of Australia’s premier web hosting providers, offering robust, high-performance solutions specifically tailored for WordPress sites. Their advanced infrastructure, unparalleled security features, and expert support team ensure that your WordPress website operates efficiently and securely, no matter its size or complexity.
• 
  Prestashop eCommerce Hosting – Australia’s Leading Hosting Provider:
  
  PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform trusted by over 300,000 online stores worldwide. It offers advanced functionalities such as product management, integrated payment gateways, SEO tools, and a rich ecosystem of themes and modules. When hosted on Fastdot, PrestaShop empowers businesses to create highly customisable and scalable online stores.
• 
  How to Register a Domain Name:
  
  Registering a domain name is one of the most critical steps in establishing an online presence, whether it’s for a personal project, a small business, or a larger organisation. This comprehensive guide walks you through the process of securing a domain name, ensuring that your website has a unique and memorable address on the internet.
• 
  Flickr Group Feature – Challenge Accepted!:
  
  This article highlights the unique dynamics of popular Flickr groups like Macro Mondays, where a shared focus and strong moderation foster vibrant online communities. Such groups demonstrate how collaboration and shared goals can create engaging and successful digital spaces.

CVE-2023-42117: Known defect related to proxy protocol usage in Exim. Only posing risk if your mail traffic is being proxied to your server, and the proxy is untrusted. We suggest verifying the trustworthiness of your proxy.

CVE-2023-42118: A libspf2 related Vulnerability has been patched by cPanel to protect against integer underflow. Due to limited details in ZDI’s reports, the exact nature of the problem remains unknown.

CVE-2023-42119: An issue related to dnsdb was reported. If you do not use smart hosts, you are not at risk. In case you have manually added a dnsdb configuration in any version of cPanel & WHM, please review your settings.

Experimental Support for the CloudLinux™ 9 OS

In cPanel & WHM version 116 we saw the welcome addition of experimental support for the CloudLinux 9 OS. It is important to note that:

• cPanel & WHM version 116 only supports CloudLinux 9 as an experimental OS.
• Usage of this OS in production environments is not recommended as unexpected errors may be encountered.
• Do not attempt to install older versions of cPanel & WHM on this OS.

For advanced WHM users familiar with the installation of this OS, we provide the following Installation Guide.
Several changes which may impact functionality:

• CloudLinux 9 may support different MySQL and MariaDB versions than other operating-system versions.
• CloudLinux 9 does not support EasyApache 4 PHP versions older than PHP 8.0.
• Since Python 2 has reached its EOL, we only support Python 3 on CloudLinux 9 servers.
• CloudLinux 9 uses the Network Manager service. You do not need to disable Network Manager on this operating system.

Exploring the future of AI in Hosting

At cPanel, we are eager to explore the AI revolution in hosting together with WebPros to define the ways in which AI is transforming the industry, and furthermore identify how our solutions can keep empowering your business going forward.

Last month, Jan Loeffler, CTO at WebPros (cPanel, Plesk, WHMCS) took the stage for an engaging online event that delved into the influence of AI in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. During this webinar, we shared with our community the ways in which AI is reshaping the hosting industry, optimizing performance, enhancing security, and streamlining operations along the way.

Whether you are a business owner, IT professional, or simply curious about the transformative role of AI in hosting, we will continue to provide valuable insights and actionable strategies to stay ahead in the digital age. We therefore only look forward to upcoming webinars to further explore the limitless potential of AI in the space of hosting, and to continue to engage with the community in this ever-evolving digital landscape.

Stay tuned for our white paper on the Influence of AI in Hosting, coming to you soon.

Sitejet Builder SEO Analysis Feature

Coming soon is our brand-new, beginner-friendly website builder: Sitejet Builder for cPanel, fully integrated and included into cPanel!

Get ready for a game-changer in website building – Sitejet Builder is about to make its debut as a fully integrated and user-friendly tool within cPanel. Designed with beginners in mind, this versatile website builder comes loaded with a powerful XOVI NOW integration, offering a robust SEO toolkit. Unlock the potential to elevate your website’s rankings, outshine competitors, and attract a broader audience with the SEO Analysis feature. Conduct free weekly site analyzes to assess your site’s performance in search engines, and gain valuable insights into the quantity and quality of your site’s rankings, visibility, and top keywords.

But that’s not all – for a more in-depth understanding, audits, and actionable items, you can seamlessly transition to XOVI NOW. The synergy between Sitejet Builder and XOVI NOW promises to revolutionize your website management experience going forward. So are you eager to get started? Then join the waitlist now to be the first to know when Sitejet Builder is released! Simply visit https://sitejet.cpanel.net/ and stay ahead in the world of website building and SEO together with cPanel.

New cPanel Site Quality Monitoring

We are thrilled to introduce cPanel Site Quality Monitoring – the key to optimizing your website performance! Free and seamlessly integrated into your cPanel, this solution puts robust website monitoring right at your fingertips.

Designed with both beginners and seasoned users in mind, cPanel Site Quality Monitoring is incredibly user-friendly and simply a breeze to set up. Tailored for both solo projects or diverse ventures, enable yourself to customize dashboards with flexible alerts, covering all the essential aspects of website monitoring.

cPanel Site Quality Monitoring offers proactive and automated issue detection which makes it a standout choice, ensuring a speedy problem resolution by providing actionable, and data-driven recommendations. With cPanel’s reliable support and expertise firmly behind it, this new feature guarantees business continuity and data security, making it your trusted companion for maintaining an exceptional and uninterrupted online presence.

MariaDB for New cPanel Installations

Starting in Q3 of 2024 with the release of cPanel & WHM v122, MariaDB Server will be the default database for new installations of cPanel. This decision stems from a collaborative effort with the MariaDB Foundation, driven by shared values and a commitment to better serve the hosting community. As our goal is to ensure predictable server lifecycles to maintain optimal cPanel server performance, the switch to MariaDB is motivated by the pursuit of stability, enhanced performance, and long-term dedicated support.

Support for MySQL will continue, thus existing installations will remain unchanged, and users, both new and existing, will retain the option to choose MySQL if preferred. This, to guarantee a smooth and flexible transition for all cPanel users.

Let’s Encrypt for AutoSSL

Expected in Q1 with the release of cPanel v118, Let’s Encrypt will become the default provider for AutoSSL. This change is part of our continuous commitments to effectively enhance the service and address rate-limiting issues going forward.

Benefits of switching to Let’s Encrypt:

• Improved process for rate-limiting negotiations.
• Faster certificate delivery time, from 2 minutes to just 5 seconds.
• Support for wildcard certificates, including *.example.com.
• Enhanced support for redirects on HTTP validation.
• The shift to API requests instead of queued requests means a faster response time for certificate errors when requesting a new certificate.

Rest assured, AutoSSL certificates will continue to be issued as usual and your systems will automatically update to use Let’s Encrypt for hostnames in cPanel v118. You can read more about AutoSSL and how to use it on our blog and our documentation.

As we aim to make this transition as smooth as possible for everyone, you can visit our Support Portal for any issues occurring when navigating through this change – our team will be more than happy to assist you round the clock.

Upcoming Events

In 2024, cPanel will continue to go strong together with the WebPros NEXT events, taking place around the world, where we aim to bring value and solutions to our strategic partners with an exclusive tour, specifically designed to strengthen our partnerships and community relationships.Stay informed about the upcoming events in 2024, and sign up to receive updates about where we are headed NEXT. We look forward to continuing to share added value solutions with you!