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  • 158

    Say Hello to our new chat

    Say Hello to our new chat Table of Contents Pretty and Personal Mobile-friendly Faster Connection Integrated Tools to help the operator More efficient chat distribution system Over the last 12 months, we have been working hard on new in-house developed chat software. The aim was to implement a series of improvements that would make the customer experience better and the work of our customer care departments even more efficient. Now I am very happy to announce that the new chat has been launched and we are already enjoying all the great improvements it introduced. Pretty and Personal Well, yes, we…

  • 85

    How to Maximize Income from Your Website – Video and Slides from the Webinar

    How to Maximize Income from Your Website – Video and Slides from the Webinar “How to Maximize Income from Your Website” is the final session from our affiliate webinar series. You will learn different methods to increase your site traffic, and success tips to help you better convert your traffic to generate higher affiliate income. Find below a recording of the session and slides from the presentation. If you haven’t been on the previous 2 editions of the series you can find them in our blog as well. Videos and slides are available for the webinars on hidden secrets of…

  • 98

    Our WordPress sites now on PHP 5.5 and above!

    Our WordPress sites now on PHP 5.5 and above! During the past few weeks, we have undertaken a serious campaign to increase the number of the WordPress sites that use more recent PHP versions on our servers. As a result, now more than 90% of all our WordPress sites are on PHP 5.5 or higher. As scary as such a massive update may sound when you have more than 100,000 WordPress instances, it turned out to be a real success. But PHP 5.5 was available for our customers for more than an year… We are one of the few hosting…

  • 94

    The CryptoPHP Infection – A Story About Getting Paid Themes and Plugins for Free

    The CryptoPHP Infection – A Story About Getting Paid Themes and Plugins for Free A few of our email servers went wild sending spam this weekend. After quickly fixing the spam issue, we started the longer process of identifying the cause for the spam. It turned out to be the CryptoPHP infection (check out the official whitepaper), activated through a few WordPress themes and plugins. What is CryptoPHP infection? The CryptoPHP infection was detected a long time ago, but seems to have been more frequently exploited over the last few months. Hackers who use that method to exploit websites, take…

  • 97

    WP eCommerce Plugin Vulnerability Fixed

    WP eCommerce Plugin Vulnerability Fixed Yesterday Sucuri reported a new vulnerability in WP eCommerce – a popular WordPress plugin for online stores. The vulnerability allows attackers to obtain private information from websites. All versions of the WP eCommerce extension before 3.8.14.4 are vulnerable and attackers may export all user accounts, addresses and other information related to people, who used your site and the plugin to purchase any products from your site. We immediately wrote our own WAF security rules to block malicious requests that try to take advantage of this vulnerability. We performed extensive tests to make sure that regular…

  • 90

    How do we compare to other hosts? – video and slides from the affiliate webinar

    How do we compare to other hosts? – video and slides from the affiliate webinar The second webinar of our Affiliate Series aims to help people who recommend SiteGround be well prepared for the question: what makes SiteGround different from all the rest? We have done detailed real-life tests with 12 hosting companies we consider close competitors and in the webinar we will show some real numbers about: How much faster exactly a website is on SiteGround servers How our reaction to security issues is the most efficient out there How much faster we resolve our customer support requests You…

  • 95

    Time to Say Goodbye to SSL Version 3.0

    Time to Say Goodbye to SSL Version 3.0 It is no secret that securing your client’s data is an ongoing process and not something that you can simply install on a server/platform. That is why security solutions and protocols evolve all the time and developers frequently release new versions. The two cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet are TLS and SSL. The latest version of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL version 3.0) is the predecessor of TLS and is nearly 15 years old. So it was only a matter of time for someone to find the next big…

  • 95

    WordCamp Europe – First Time Organizer Perspective

    WordCamp Europe – First Time Organizer Perspective Table of Contents How Did All This Happen in the First Place? 1. Volunteer Work ≠ Little Work ⇒ Dedicate Time if you Want to do it Right. 2. Don’t be Afraid to Step up and Take Responsibility. Be Proactive. 3. Communicate – Be as Precise, Clear, Justified and Timely as Possible 4. Start with the Budget – It’s the First Step to a Great Event 5. Enjoy it! Photo by Vladimir Kaladan Petkov For the last few months there have been times that I wasn’t present at the office, I could not…

  • 91

    SiteGround Affiliates Area Webinar – Video and Slides Available

    SiteGround Affiliates Area Webinar – Video and Slides Available As firm believers in educating and empowering all our clients and affiliates, we extended our webinars tradition and last week started a new webinar series for SiteGround affiliates. I was honored to present the first webinar which was focused on the tools and features available in our affiliate area. As the tradition goes, we’re making the video reply and slides publicly available, so feel free to watch here and download! Next Affiliate Webinar – October 22nd The 2nd webinar from the series will be on October 22nd and will reveal how…

  • 86

    Major Bash Vulnerability Fixed on All Servers

    Major Bash Vulnerability Fixed on All Servers A major security flaw was discovered in the most popular shell (Bash) which is used by default in many Linux and Unix distributions. A shell is a program that takes your commands (accessing folders, listing files, etc.) that you type and sends them to the operating system to be executed. The Bash vulnerability, also known as Shellshock, allows attackers to issue arbitrary commands via crafted environment variables. The bad thing about this specific vulnerability is that it is fairly easy to craft such a request and attack a server. In addition, the vulnerability affects…

  • 95

    Updated: WordCamp Europe Coming to Sofia!

    Updated: WordCamp Europe Coming to Sofia! At SiteGround we definitely love WordCamps. We have been involved as sponsors and speakers in many of them lately. However, the upcoming WordCamp Europe is extra special for us. The reason? It will happen in our home city – Sofia! So apart from being just a sponsor, we get the chance to become much more involved this time: we have a ninja volunteer (Tina) in the main organization team of the event; we will welcome the contribution day in our office and we will be able to share our favorite places and pastimes with…

  • 83

    WordCamping with Angels

    WordCamping with Angels SiteGround was one of the sponsors of the Los Angeles WordCamp 2014 and I was thrilled to be part of the team attending the event. We spent three extremely exciting and rewarding days together with more than 300 other WordPress enthusiasts in the City of Angels. We also had the chance to be involved in many of the great #WCLAX activities including the beginner’s workshop, the selfie scavenger hunt and the contribution Sunday. The Beginner’s Workshop We started out the conference on Friday, September 5th, with the beginners workshop track where attendees were encouraged to make their…

  • 97

    Stoked by Reasons To Be Creative

    Stoked by Reasons To Be Creative I spent last week in Brighton (UK), attending the Reasons To Be Creative conference, which SiteGround sponsored. Right from the beginning of the event I started hearing the word “stoked” (completely and intensely enthusiastic, exhilarated, or excited about something, according to the Urban Dictionary) unusually often. I heard it repeatedly used not only by John Davey (the great guy organizing the event), but also by many of the attendees. By the end of the event I already knew how it felt like to be stoked myself. Reasons To Be Creative is one of those…

  • 163

    SiteGround Customers Protected Against Serious VirtueMart Vulnerability!

    SiteGround Customers Protected Against Serious VirtueMart Vulnerability! A serious vulnerability in the popular Joomla extension VirtueMart was discovered by the awesome people at Sucuri during one of their regular security audits. It allows regular users to gain Super Administrator privileges to a Joomla website with VirtueMart 2.6.8c and below installed on it. If a site with an older version of VirtueMart allows user registration (which is a default mode in VirtueMart) it can be hacked through this vulnerability. Our security team has acted immediately and we’ve added the necessary rules to our in-house application layer firewall in order to protect our customers. VirtueMart developers have…

  • 93

    Upcoming Chicago Data Center Migration

    Upcoming Chicago Data Center Migration Few months ago our data center partner SingleHop has successfully completed their newest and most advanced facility in Chicago. With all the innovations introduced on the spot, we were excited by the great opportunity it gives us to further improve our hosting service. To make this happen we will transfer to it all our US-based accounts during the next few months. The new location is above the best industry standards and will encompass the currently used one with: higher class network equipment that will result in better speed better organized space of SiteGround machines in…

  • 91

    SiteGround Reporting live from Affiliate Summit East

    SiteGround Reporting live from Affiliate Summit East As any other marketing channel, affiliate marketing has its tips and tricks, and it takes know-how and experience to be good at it. That is why Missy Ward and Shawn Collins have undertaken the difficult task of helping affiliates and merchants share knowledge and find new business opportunities by organizing the Affiliate Summit conference that happens twice a year – on the East and on the West coast of the USA. The most recent Affiliate Summit just happened in New York, from August 10th to August 12th, and our team was quite excited to attend it.…

  • 99

    WordPress & Drupal Vulnerability? –  Keep calm and update!

    WordPress & Drupal Vulnerability? –  Keep calm and update! Yesterday, a serious vulnerability in the PHP XML parser used by WordPress and Drupal was announced. After some great collaboration between the core developers of those applications, new versions that address the issue were released for both WordPress and Drupal. We, at SiteGround, are proactively addressing the issue too: Our security team has been addressing the issue on the server level. We have discerned unwanted activity during last week and have applied certain firewall rules to mitigate it even before the exploited issue was announced. Once we became aware of the officially…

  • 90

    Joomla! Kunena Vulnerability Fixed on all SiteGround Servers

    Joomla! Kunena Vulnerability Fixed on all SiteGround Servers Critical vulnerability in the famous Kunena forum component for Joomla! were announced three days ago and a new version of the component that addresses the issue was released. According to the official Kunena blog post all extension that are not updated to the latest version are vulnerable and the attackers may use XSS and SQL injection to gain full access to a Joomla! site. Immediately after the Kunena team tweeted about the issue SiteGround security team took rapid actions to protect all customers hosted on our servers. I have personally contacted the developers of…

  • 87

    SiteGround at OSCON 2014

    SiteGround at OSCON 2014 You’ve probably heard that before, but here at SiteGround, we love Open Source. Our hosting platform is built on open source software, we host more than 150 different open source apps, and we sponsor various open source events and communities. Yet, this was our first time we sponsored OSCON – the biggest conference about everything open source, that happened in Portland last week. We shared our knowledge… The scope of the event and the amount of information that flew around was amazing. One could really see and meet the best of the best from all major…

  • 92

    WPtouch Security Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers

    WPtouch Security Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers A serious vulnerability in one of the most popular WordPress plugins – WPtouch was announced yesterday. The exploit allows registered users to upload malicious PHP files to your website and use them to gain further access to it. The plugin that creates a mobile-friendly version of your website is widely used so our security team immediately took action to prevent our users from getting hacked through this exploit. We’ve acted in a manner that has been proven successful in the recent JetPack and TimThumb vulnerabilities – we used our application layer firewall to…

  • 164

    Two-factor authentication now available for your SiteGround account!

    Two-factor authentication now available for your SiteGround account! If you have gone through the anguish of having your personal information exposed to theft and abuse, you probably already realize that even the best password is not always enough to protect your data against unauthorized access. There are many ways how you can find yourself exposed: lost/stolen electronic devices, electronic fraud (phishing, scam, etc.), and hacking of popular service providers have all become widespread. Two-factor authentication has become the weapon of choice to add an extra layer of security and in recent months we have had several requests from customers to integrate…

  • 95

    TimThumb Critical Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers

    TimThumb Critical Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers Another serious security issue was reported earlier today within one of the popular WordPress plugins for managing thumbnails – TimThumb. This plugin already has a history of causing security issues in the past with which we dealt with. The current vulnerability allows the attacker to gain unauthorised access to your hosting account and even execute shell commands on it. Needless to say, this is not something we can allow to happen. Our security team has reacted immediatelly after the vulnerability was disclosed. We have applied a patch in our in-house system to protect all our customers…

  • 94

    SiteGround SMS Notifications now Help you Sleep Better!

    SiteGround SMS Notifications now Help you Sleep Better! It is very stressful to receive a call while on a vacation by a customer, asking if you have any idea why his site is down. It is even more unpleasant to realize that the reason is something so simple, as a failed renewal, or something else, that you could have easily prevented, if you knew about it on time. To minimize the chance for such situations we have launched a brand new SMS notification system. We started sending messages about failed renewals and resource usage issues, at the beginning of the…

  • 94

    Our Affiliates’ Verdict: Quality Matters!

    Our Affiliates’ Verdict: Quality Matters! Table of Contents Who is our Affiliate? Why join the SiteGround Affiliate program? How Affiliates rate our program? What’s next? Conclusion When we launched our new affiliate program almost 2 years ago we aimed to increase the number of people who recommend us by providing very competitive payout terms. However, we did not want to diminish the importance of our service quality and our goal was to keep it the number one reason for people to endorse us. The ever growing numbers of affiliate sales over the last 2 years showed that we were on the…

  • 91

    Student Web Hosting – A look at Product Management at SiteGround

    Student Web Hosting – A look at Product Management at SiteGround Table of Contents Identify the opportunity Who is your customer? Define your solution Reaching your target market Measuring impact Moving forward Final Remarks Sharing knowledge is one of the main moving forces at SiteGround and our technical tutorials, webinars, and resources are well-known to people building on Joomla, WordPress, and other platforms. Today, we would like to test sharing knowledge a different area – how we approach marketing and product management at the company. Six months have passed since the improved Student Hosting Program was introduced and this gives me…

  • 158

    Hangout About the New Joomla and WordPress Toolkits – Full Record and Answers

    Hangout About the New Joomla and WordPress Toolkits – Full Record and Answers As promised, we’re adding the full recording of the hangout we had on Tuesday on our new Joomla and WordPress toolkits. We’d like to thank all of you who joined us live! We have received some questions regarding the tool after the hangout ended, so we’re going to answer them in this blog post. Q: Heather Annf: If the sites are already established, how can I add them to the toolkit?A: If your site is hosted in the same account, but you do not see it in…

  • 94

    Introducing the SiteGround WordPress & Joomla Toolkits!

    Introducing the SiteGround WordPress & Joomla Toolkits! We’re happy to introduce to you the latest set of tools we developed to make your Joomla and WordPress experience better. Read more to find out what our tools can do for you and how they will help you manage your sites more easily. Regularly, we go through support tickets, chats and emails you’ve sent us and look for recurring questions. When we see certain inquiries coming up frequently, we start thinking what we can do to help you out on a more global scale and make your experience better. That is how…

  • 88

    Jetpack Critical Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers

    Jetpack Critical Vulnerability Fixed on SiteGround Servers Yesterday, on April 10th, a critical security flaw in the popular Jetpack plugin was made public in an official statement by the Jetpack developers. If the vulnerability was exploited, an attacker could publish new posts in any WordPress installation using Jetpack and possibly get even more access to that site. Although we did not detect any hacked sites through that exploit on our servers, that was a critical security hole and we took several actions to patch it. Adding a Rule to Our Firewall System Normally, some of the actions of the Jetpack plugin should be…

  • 99

    SSL HeartBleed Vulnerability Patched

    SSL HeartBleed Vulnerability Patched As some of you already know, a major vulnerability in some versions of the OpenSSL software libraries was announced two days ago. It got the fancy name “HeartBleed” and in short, allows anyone on the Internet to read the server memory protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software and hijack your SSL’s private key. The interesting information is that not all old versions of the software are affected and there are some older and some newer ones that have it. As you should expect from SiteGround, we did not lose any time taking the…

  • 83

    How to Bring Our Client Meetups to the Next Level?

    How to Bring Our Client Meetups to the Next Level? After the success of our first Open Bar initiative in Orlando last year,  last week Tina, Daniel and I hosted the second SiteGround Open Bar in London. We were incredibly happy to see all the people that showed up to chat and have a drink with us. The fact that so many of you said that our support is second to none definitely made our evening and we got back home happy and more motivated to work even harder to keep that same level of highest quality of service. Besides…

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