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.
- Aug 2, 2026
Minnesota 1, Grok 0: The Limits of Algorithmic Freedom
A federal judge just told xAI that Minnesota has every right to ban apps that strip clothes off people, proving that some lines aren't meant to be crossed even in the name of free speech.
Read more→ - Aug 1, 2026
Unpacking the Tesla-China Exit Strategy
Analyzing the rumors of Tesla divesting its China business to pave the way for a SpaceX merger amid growing geopolitical risks.
Read more→ - Jul 31, 2026
Closing the Identity Gap Between Humans and Machines
Okta’s $200M acquisition of Permiso highlights the growing challenge of securing non-human identities as AI agents move from experimental toys to production-grade enterprise tools.
Read more→
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 Brief: Critical Core RCE & WP2Shell Active Exploitation
Critical WordPress Core Exploitation
Hackers are actively exploiting a pair of recently patched vulnerabilities in WordPress core, collectively known as WP2Shell [1][5]. The attack chain involves CVE-2026-60137 and CVE-2026-63030, enabling unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) on default installations [2][10]. Infrastructure teams should prioritize patching to WordPress 6.9.5 or 7.0.2 immediately, as tens of millions of sites were estimated to be at risk as of earlier this week [1][10].
Plugin Vulnerabilities & SQL Injection
- WP Automatic Plugin: Massive exploitation of CVE-2024-27956 (CVSS 9.8) continues, where attackers use SQL injection to gain administrator privileges and inject backdoors [7].
- Pronamic Pay: A critical privilege escalation flaw (CVE-2026-16635, CVSS 8.8) allows Subscriber-level users to update roles via Gravity Forms fields [4].
- WPvivid Backup & Migration: A critical RCE flaw has been identified impacting over 900,000 installations [8].
Malware & Persistence Trends
Attackers are deploying obfuscated backdoors disguised as legitimate plugins to maintain persistence after initial compromise [9]. Security teams are advised to monitor for unauthorized plugin installations and restore from known-good backups if indicators of compromise (IoCs) are found [9].
Weekly Vulnerability Volume
Wordfence Intelligence tracked 75 new vulnerabilities between July 13 and July 19 [3]. A broader reporting period identified 267 vulnerabilities across 222 plugins and 6 themes, affecting approximately 12.9 million installs, with 33 vulnerabilities remaining unpatched at the time of reporting [6].
Other Notable CVEs
- CubeWP Framework: CVE-2026-6453 (CVSS 6.5) - Subscriber+ SQL Injection [4].
- Kirki Customizer: CVE-2026-15601 (CVSS 4.9) - Editor+ Path Traversal/Arbitrary File Write [4].
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.