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.
- Jul 22, 2026
When Large Language Models Grow Hands
Rumors of Anthropic looking to acquire Physical Intelligence suggest that the next phase of AI isn't just about faster chat, but moving things in the physical world.
Read more→ - Jul 22, 2026
The Sixteen-Year Sleep: Reflections on the Januscape KVM Crisis
When a core virtualization vulnerability like Januscape surfaces after sixteen years, it tests the true operational maturity of the world's largest hosting providers.
Read more→ - Jul 20, 2026
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Just Hacked the Creative Pipeline
Netflix is dropping half a billion dollars on an AI production house, signaling a massive shift in how the industry handles the bridge between raw code and cinema.
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: Emergency WordPress Core Updates and WP2Shell Exploitation
Critical WordPress Core Update (v7.0.2)
WordPress has released an emergency security update, version 7.0.2, to address a critical chain of two vulnerabilities [1]. These flaws allow unauthenticated remote attackers to achieve full site takeover [3, 10]. Infrastructure teams should prioritize immediate patching as tens of millions of sites are potentially exposed to these remote takeover flaws [6].
WP2Shell and Active RCE Exploitation
Aggressive in-the-wild exploitation is currently targeting WordPress sites via a set of vulnerabilities known as "WP2Shell" [2, 4].
- CVE-2026-60137 & CVE-2026-63030: These allow unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE), enabling attackers to gain full control without login credentials [2, 3].
- Plugin Impact: Active attacks have been observed targeting the Easy WP SMTP plugin specifically to facilitate these exploits [4].
High-Volume Plugin Vulnerabilities
Between July 12 and July 19, 103 security issues were disclosed in the WordPress ecosystem, including 8 critical and 26 high-severity vulnerabilities [5]. Notable active threats include:
- Ninja Forms: CVE-2026-65052 (High Severity) affects version ≤ 3.14.8 due to improper input validation [9].
- Webshell Campaign: Government alerts have identified 17 specific plugin vulnerabilities currently being exploited to plant webshells on target servers [8].
Infrastructure Recommendations
Hosting providers and agencies should audit for high-risk components including Elementor, Divi, and WPBakery, which are frequent targets for CVE exploits [7]. Ensure all managed instances are moved to WordPress 7.0.2 immediately to mitigate the active WP2Shell campaign [1, 10].
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.