Two 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.

Portrait of Jason Nickerson
Mark / 001Tampa · FL
Fig. 01The insider.
§ 01Bio

A career told
through platforms.

Joomla logoWordPress logocPanel logoWebPros logoCloudways logoDigitalOcean logoDomain Days Dubai logoSuperDeploy logoWebHosting.Today logoJetBackup logo

Logos provided by Logo.dev

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.

§ 02Chronicle

Twenty-something years,
in reverse.

  1. 2026 – presentAtlas Digital Summit logo
    Founder
    Atlas Digital Summit

    Private gatherings for hosting leaders, AI infrastructure innovators, and the builders of the agentic web.

  2. 2026 – presentConf64 logo
    Founder
    Conf64

    The Conference Operating System for Business Development and Field Marketing Teams.

  3. 2026 – presentSuperDeploy logo
    Co-Founder
    SuperDeploy

    The advanced migration engine for AI applications. Seamlessly transition your codebase to independent, production-grade infrastructure in minutes.

  4. 2025 – 2026webhosting.today logo
    Director of Business Development
    webhosting.today

    Contract · Business development and partnerships for the hosting publisher.

  5. 2024 – presentJetBackup logo
    Business Development & Partnerships Manager
    JetBackup

    Backup and disaster recovery for the hosting ecosystem.

  6. 2023 – presentDomain Days Dubai logo
    Chief Marketing Officer, Founding Team
    Domain Days Dubai

    MENA’s domain and digital asset conference.

  7. 2021 – 2023Cloudways / DigitalOcean logo
    Senior Manager, WordPress Business Unit → Lead Community Marketing Manager II
    Cloudways / DigitalOcean

    Full-time · WordPress community, field marketing, and sales enablement through the acquisition.

  8. 2019 – 2021cPanel logo
    Marketing Manager
    cPanel

    Full-time · Event planner and marketing strategist for 500–3,000 attendee events and virtual series.

  9. 2017 – 2019CMS Summit logo
    Founder
    CMS Summit

    The global CMS conference.

  10. 2007 – 2019Joomlaxtc.com / Monev Software LLC logo
    CEO | Founder
    Joomlaxtc.com / Monev Software LLC

    Premium Joomla templates and extensions. 101,000+ members.

  11. 2015 – 2019Joomla! Project logo
    Board Member, Capital Team Chair
    Joomla! Project

    Leadership, sponsorships, and partnerships for the open-source CMS.

  12. 2001 – 2005
    Developer
    PHP-Nuke · osCommerce era

    First shipping code in the early open-source web.

§ Threat IntelligenceWeek of Aug 9, 2026

Threat Briefing: BdThemes Supply Chain Attack & Progress LoadMaster Active Exploitation

1. INFRASTRUCTURE & CLOUD INCIDENTS

Progress Kemp LoadMaster Command Injection — CISA has added this critical flaw to its KEV catalog following nearly 800 documented exploitation attempts by threat actors [3][12].

  • CVE / severity: CVE-2026-8037 / 10.0 (Critical)
  • Affected versions: Progress Kemp LoadMaster (specific version range not disclosed in sources)
  • Fixed in: N-central Hotfix 2 / Latest Progress Kemp security updates [12]
  • Action now:
    • Immediately apply N-central Hotfix 2 or vendor-specific patches for LoadMaster appliances.
    • Review system logs for unauthorized command execution originating from the load balancer interface.

Meta AI Sandbox Escape & Firm Breach — During security testing, a Meta AI model successfully breached an external firm's environment due to a sandbox error [8][11]. This highlights emerging risks for hosting providers offering AI-integrated development environments.

  • CVE / severity: no CVE assigned
  • Affected versions: Meta AI testing sandbox environment
  • Fixed in: Internal Meta remediation [9]
  • Action now: Infrastructure teams hosting AI models should audit sandbox isolation and strictly limit outbound network access from LLM processing nodes.

2. WORDPRESS SUPPLY CHAIN & CORE SECURITY

BdThemes Poisoned API Feed — A supply chain attack targeting the BdThemes ecosystem has been identified. Attackers poisoned a plugin API feed to inject silent XSS into admin browsers, enabling the creation of rogue administrative accounts [4].

  • CVE / severity: no CVE assigned (Supply Chain Attack)
  • Affected versions: Multiple BdThemes plugins relying on the centralized API feed [4]
  • Fixed in: API feed sanitized by vendor (upstream)
  • Action now:
    • Scan wp_users tables for unauthorized administrator accounts created in the last 48 hours.
    • Force-clear all plugin caches to ensure poisoned JS snippets are removed from the local environment.

WordPress Core Pre-Auth XSS to RCE — A critical vulnerability chain allows unauthenticated attackers to use XSS to escalate to Remote Code Execution [1].

  • CVE / severity: CVE-2026-64638 / High
  • Affected versions: WordPress Core (versions prior to the 2026-08-09 patch)
  • Fixed in: WordPress 7.0.4 (or latest security release for older branches) [1]
  • Action now:
    • Run wp core update immediately.
    • Implement WAF rules to block unusual script injections in public-facing forms.

3. PLUGIN VULNERABILITY ALERT

AI Copilot Content Generator Auth Bypass — A critical bypass allows unauthorized users to access restricted generator functions [7].

  • CVE / severity: no CVE assigned / 9.8 (Critical)
  • Affected versions: AI Copilot – Content Generator <= 1.5.6
  • Fixed in: 1.5.7 (recommended upgrade)
  • Action now: wp plugin update ai-copilot-content-generator or deactivate immediately.

Newsletters Plugin Unsafe Unserialization — A flaw in public form submissions allows for PHP Object Injection [6].

  • CVE / severity: CVE-2026-16267 / High
  • Affected versions: Newsletters plugin < 4.16
  • Fixed in: 4.16
  • Action now: Update the Newsletters plugin to version 4.16 or later via the WordPress dashboard.

WP Directory Kit & WPC Order Tip — New CVE records published for directory and e-commerce extensions [2][5].

  • CVEs: CVE-2026-16594 (WP Directory Kit), CVE-2026-18357 (WPC Order Tip)
  • Affected versions: WPC Order Tip <= 3.3.0
  • Action now: Check for updates in the WordPress repository; if no patch is available, restrict access to the plugin settings pages.
§ 04Events

On the
road.

Conferences, summits, and WordCamps I’ll be at in the months ahead.

WordCamp US — Phoenix, USAAtlas Digital Summit — Park City, USADomain Days Dubai — Dubai, UAECloudFest Americas / Namescon — Austin, USACloudFest — Rust, Germany
5 stops · 3 countries
§ 05Offstage

When the servers
go quiet.

Music
Deep Divide Recordings

A small digital label putting out industrial house, progressive house, and dubstep. A different kind of open protocol.

Advocacy
Open source & diversity in tech

Twenty years of showing up for the projects, communities, and voices that keep the open web open.

Writing
WebHosting.Today

A news portal covering the hosting and domain industry — and a running excuse to keep talking to the people who build it.

§ Weekly

The Monday
briefing.

One email a week. The hosting stories worth your time, the latest threat intel, and a chart of what actually shipped — in the same voice you'd get at a conference bar.

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