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.
- Sep 1, 2026
Supply Chain Vulnerability isn't Just About Code
When the backbone of medical distribution goes offline, the industry realizes how thin the line is between digital security and physical health.
Read article: Supply Chain Vulnerability isn't Just About Code→ - Sep 1, 2026
When the Thermostat Hits 50C, Uptime is the Second Priority
Proton's recent Frankfurt outage highlights a cold reality: in a world of hardware scarcity, you might have to kill the service to save the servers.
Read article: When the Thermostat Hits 50C, Uptime is the Second Priority→ - Aug 31, 2026
The .net Tax Collector Cometh Again
Verisign is bumping .net wholesale prices to $12.00 in 2027, proving once again that in the domain world, the only constant is the price hike.
Read article: The .net Tax Collector Cometh Again→
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 Critical Domain Flaw & WordPress miniOrange Active Exploits
NEW Infrastructure & Hosting Threats
cPanel Domain Parking/Addon Critical Logic Flaw — Hosting operators face a critical risk involving how domains are partitioned and managed within the cPanel/WHM ecosystem. Exploitation could allow unauthorized domain manipulation or account interference [6][7].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-65643 (Critical)
- Affected versions: cPanel & WHM versions prior to 118.0.21, 120.0.9, and 122.0.2
- Fixed in: 118.0.21, 120.0.9, 122.0.2
- Action now:
- Run
/scripts/upcpimmediately to force an update to the latest patched tier. - Verify
/var/cpanel/userdataintegrity for unexpected addon domain entries. - Audit VPS instances for orphaned domain configurations as part of the remediation [7].
- Run
ACTIVE EXPLOITS: WordPress & CMS
miniOrange Plugin Vulnerabilities Under Active Attack — Attackers are actively targeting WordPress sites via vulnerabilities in miniOrange plugins. These exploits are being observed in the wild following the disclosure of critical auth-related flaws [3].
- CVE / severity: Multiple (Critical RCE/Auth Bypass)
- Affected versions: Multiple miniOrange plugins (specific versions not disclosed in sources, but active targeting confirmed)
- Fixed in: Latest available versions on WordPress.org or vendor site.
- Action now:
- Update all miniOrange plugins (e.g.,
wp plugin update miniorange-login-openid-social-login). - Review administrator logs for unauthorized new users or settings changes.
- Implement WAF rules to block unusual POST requests to plugin-specific endpoints.
- Update all miniOrange plugins (e.g.,
DISCLOSED WordPress Plugin Vulnerabilities
bbPress Broken Access Control — A flaw in the popular forum plugin allows for unauthorized access to restricted areas or functions, though it is currently categorized as low priority [9].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (Low Priority)
- Affected versions: bbPress <= 2.6.14
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources; update to latest version recommended.
- Action now:
- Monitor forum moderator activity for unauthorized escalations.
- Restrict sensitive forum management URLs via
.htaccessor WAF.
Kalles Addons Reflected XSS — A medium-severity vulnerability in this theme-related addon allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into the session of other users [10].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (Medium Priority)
- Affected versions: Kalles Addons Plugin <= 1.0.6
- Fixed in: Patchstack users are currently protected; update to latest version available.
- Action now:
- Update to the latest version via the WordPress dashboard.
- Sanitize input for custom Kalles widgets if patching is delayed.
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.