Jason Nickerson — Hosting Industry InsiderTwo decades
inside the web
as it kept rewriting
itself.
I’m Jason, a hosting industry insider with experience across open-source CMS platforms, control panels, cloud infrastructure, and the events that bring the industry together. Today, I focus on building partnerships, programming industry summits, and documenting what is happening across the hosting ecosystem.
- Aug 17, 2026
Stripe Buys the Toll Booth for the AI Era
Stripe's reported $7B acquisition of OpenRouter proves that in the AI gold rush, the real money is in the plumbing and the payments.
Read article: Stripe Buys the Toll Booth for the AI Era→ - Aug 17, 2026
When the Desert Heat Meets a Single Point of Failure
A summer storm in Phoenix proved that even the biggest hosting brands are at the mercy of a data center's HVAC system when the power flickers.
Read article: When the Desert Heat Meets a Single Point of Failure→ - Aug 15, 2026
Chasing the Eternal 20-Year Horizon
Billions are pouring into fusion startups, proving that in the world of venture capital, the promise of unlimited energy is the ultimate long-term play.
Read article: Chasing the Eternal 20-Year Horizon→
The early 2000s were the good years for tinkerers. Open-source CMS platforms were the closest thing we had to a universal starter kit, and PHP-Nuke and osCommerce were how you learned to ship real projects on the open web. I went deep on Joomla for the better part of a decade, contributing code to the project, organizing its community around releases and events, and eventually crossing over into the WordPress orbit that quietly swallowed everything in its path.
From there the story is a tour of the hosting stack: cPanel and the control-panel era that defined shared hosting, the managed cloud wave at Cloudways and DigitalOcean, and the publishing side at webhosting.today. Day to day now I'm at JetBackup, working on backup and disaster recovery and helping hosts protect the infrastructure that keeps everything running. I also program the seasonal industry summits, Atlas Digital Summit and Domain Days Dubai, where the hosting community gathers to set the agenda for what comes next.
The through-line is community, the conferences, the hallway conversations, and the group chats where the industry actually decides what happens next. The technology changes; the people pointing it in the right direction stay the same.
Twenty-something years,
in reverse.
- 2026 – present
FounderAtlas Digital SummitPrivate gatherings for hosting leaders, AI infrastructure innovators, and the builders of the agentic web.
- 2026 – presentFounderConf64
The Conference Operating System for Business Development and Field Marketing Teams.
- 2026 – present
Co-FounderSuperDeployThe advanced migration engine for AI applications. Seamlessly transition your codebase to independent, production-grade infrastructure in minutes.
- 2025 – 2026Director of Business Developmentwebhosting.today
Contract · Business development and partnerships for the hosting publisher.
- 2024 – presentBusiness Development & Partnerships ManagerJetBackup
Backup and disaster recovery for the hosting ecosystem.
- 2023 – present
Chief Marketing Officer, Founding TeamDomain Days DubaiMENA’s domain and digital asset conference.
- 2021 – 2023Senior Manager, WordPress Business Unit → Lead Community Marketing Manager IICloudways / DigitalOcean
Full-time · WordPress community, field marketing, and sales enablement through the acquisition.
- 2019 – 2021Marketing ManagercPanel
Full-time · Event planner and marketing strategist for 500–3,000 attendee events and virtual series.
- 2017 – 2019FounderCMS Summit
The global CMS conference.
- 2007 – 2019CEO | FounderJoomlaxtc.com / Monev Software LLC
Premium Joomla templates and extensions. 101,000+ members.
- 2015 – 2019Board Member, Capital Team ChairJoomla! Project
Leadership, sponsorships, and partnerships for the open-source CMS.
- 2001 – 2005DeveloperPHP-Nuke · osCommerce era
First shipping code in the early open-source web.
Threat Briefing: cPanel Zero-Day, Linux Kernel Security & SafePal Plugin Breach
Hosting & Infrastructure Threats
cPanel & WHM Critical Zero-Day Vulnerability — Exploitation of a severe flaw in the flagship control panel software has been confirmed in recent threat activity reports [2].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-41940 / Severity not explicitly disclosed in source, treated as Critical [2].
- Affected versions: cPanel & WHM versions prior to the April 2026 advisory [2].
- Fixed in: Specific version not disclosed in sources; latest stable build recommended [2].
- Action now:
- Execute
/scripts/upcpimmediately to ensure the latest security binaries are installed. - Audit cPanel API logs for unauthorized calls originating from unknown IP addresses.
- Execute
Broad Linux Kernel Security Advisory for cPanel Environments — Infrastructure teams are alerted to a series of high-impact kernel vulnerabilities affecting all major Linux distributions (CentOS, AlmaLinux, Ubuntu, CloudLinux) utilized in hosting environments [1].
- CVE / severity: No specific CVEs assigned in source; categorized as "Critical and High" [1].
- Affected versions: All major Linux distributions used in hosting environments [1].
- Fixed in: June 2026 Security Patch [1].
- Action now:
- Run
dnf update kernelorapt-get upgradefollowed by a system reboot. - For zero-downtime environments, verify that KernelCare or equivalent live-patching services have applied the June 2026 definitions.
- Run
WordPress & CMS Vulnerabilities
SafePal Plugin Data Breach — A vulnerability in a specialized customer order information plugin has resulted in the theft of personal data for 40,000 customers [14].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned [14].
- Affected versions: Customer order information plugin (SafePal specific/custom) [14].
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources [14].
- Action now:
- WP Agencies: Audit all custom or third-party "Order Management" or "E-commerce Connector" plugins for insecure direct object references (IDOR).
- Hosting Providers: Monitor for spikes in outbound traffic from database-heavy plugins which may indicate exfiltration.
DevOps & Supply Chain Risks
AI Agentic Tool Pipeline Risks — New research highlights that AI-integrated developer tools in DevOps pipelines are becoming primary targets for lateral movement and immutable backup circumvention [9].
- Impact: Potential for unauthorized code injection into production environments via automated AI agents.
- Action now:
- Implement strict execution controls for any AI-assisted CI/CD tools [9].
- Verify the integrity of immutable backups to ensure they are isolated from automated pipeline credentials [9].
Managed Vulnerability Mitigation — FlyWP has integrated Patchstack intelligence to provide real-time mitigation for WordPress sites, aimed at reducing the window between vulnerability disclosure and patching [3].
On the
road.
Conferences, summits, and WordCamps I’ll be at in the months ahead.
- Aug 16 – 19, 2026
- Sep 28 – 29, 2026
- Domain Days DubaiRescheduled
New dates to be announced.
Oct 15 – 16, 2026 - Nov 11 – 12, 2026
- State of the WordDec 2026
- Mar 15 – 18, 2027
When the servers
go quiet.
A small digital label putting out industrial house, progressive house, and dubstep. A different kind of open protocol.
Twenty years of showing up for the projects, communities, and voices that keep the open web open.
A news portal covering the hosting and domain industry — and a running excuse to keep talking to the people who build it.