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.
- Oct 23, 2026
Rivian’s Simulation Game Just Got Real
Rivian is moving beyond basic sensors by acquiring Third Dimension to build high-fidelity virtual worlds for their self-driving future.
Read article: Rivian’s Simulation Game Just Got Real→ - Oct 23, 2026
Selling Infrastructure is a Race to the Bottom
The shift from raw server specs to integrated business platforms isn't just a marketing pivot; it's a survival strategy for the industry's biggest players.
Read article: Selling Infrastructure is a Race to the Bottom→ - Oct 22, 2026
Hardware Is Hard, But Ambient AI Is Just Getting Weird
Nirva just pulled in $33M for a wearable AI pendant that promises to only listen to you, but history suggests the real challenge is surviving the second iteration.
Read article: Hardware Is Hard, But Ambient AI Is Just Getting Weird→
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: Global PHP2Shell RCE Outbreak & cPanel/EasyApache Emergency Patches
1. INFRASTRUCTURE: Critical PHP2Shell Use-After-Free RCEs
Global infrastructure teams are scrambling to patch the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities disclosed this week [1][2]. These critical flaws reside in the PHP runtime itself, allowing for remote code execution (RCE) and full server takeover [6][10]. The flaws have caused significant downtime as providers restart services to apply memory-safety fixes [8][9].
PHP2Shell (Use-After-Free Bugs) — RCE risk impacting ~70% of the web.
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 | CVSS v4.0: 9.2 (Critical) [3][6]
- Affected versions: PHP 8.2.x < 8.2.35, 8.3.x < 8.3.36, 8.4.x < 8.4.27, and 8.5.x < 8.5.12 [5][7]
- Fixed in: PHP 8.2.35, 8.3.36, 8.4.27, and 8.5.12 [5]
- Action now:
- Upgrade PHP immediately via your distribution's package manager (e.g.,
dnf update phporapt upgrade php-fpm). - Restart PHP-FPM and web server services (Nginx/Apache) to ensure the new binary is loaded in memory.
- Upgrade PHP immediately via your distribution's package manager (e.g.,
2. HOSTING CONTROL PANELS: cPanel/EasyApache Emergency Updates
cPanel has issued emergency updates for EasyApache 4 to address the PHP2Shell flaws across its managed PHP stacks, including legacy versions backported for security [11][13]. A third unspecified vulnerability in WP Toolkit was also addressed in this cycle [13].
cPanel EA-PHP Security Update — Critical RCE patch for hosting environments.
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 | CVSS 9.2 [11]
- Affected versions: ea-php74, ea-php80, ea-php81, ea-php82, ea-php83, ea-php84 [11][12]
- Fixed in: EasyApache 4 Change Log 25 (released Oct 22-23) [12]
- Action now:
- Run
/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/upcpor update EasyApache via WHM (Software > EasyApache 4 > Update). - Verify versions using
rpm -q ea-php82-php-common(or respective version) to ensure the latest build is installed.
- Run
3. WORDPRESS / CMS: Link Library Stored XSS
While PHP2Shell is the primary threat to WordPress environments [3][5], a new plugin-specific vulnerability has been identified in Link Library, which could allow attackers to hijack administrative sessions [4].
Link Library Stored XSS — Contributor-level privilege escalation to Admin.
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-78392 | Severity not disclosed in sources [4]
- Affected versions: Link Library plugin (version range not explicitly disclosed in sources) [4]
- Fixed in: Latest version (check WordPress.org for 2026-10-23 updates) [4]
- Action now:
- Update via CLI:
wp plugin update link-library. - Audit all "Contributor" and "Author" role accounts for unauthorized link submissions or metadata changes [4].
- Update via CLI:
On the
road.
Conferences, summits, and WordCamps I’ll be at in the months ahead.
- 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.