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 5, 2026
Washington Just Rebranded the AI Safety Net
A look at the new Super Intelligence Force and what it means for infrastructure providers navigating a shifting regulatory landscape.
Read article: Washington Just Rebranded the AI Safety Net→ - Oct 5, 2026
The Annual cPanel Tax: When Predictability Becomes the Product
WebPros has signaled another price hike for 2027, continuing a trend that has fundamentally shifted the economics of the web hosting industry over the last decade.
Read article: The Annual cPanel Tax: When Predictability Becomes the Product→ - Oct 3, 2026
Sean Parker, Music, and the Long Game of Forgiveness
Twenty-five years after Napster, Sean Parker is steering Stability AI back into the music business—this time with the labels actually writing the checks.
Read article: Sean Parker, Music, and the Long Game of Forgiveness→
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: Hosting Infrastructure Attacks & Critical Elementor Add-on SQLi
1. Infrastructure & Hosting Layer Incidents
- Pantheon Platform Host Attack: Security teams report an incident where compromised customer applications were used to interact with shared hosting infrastructure [10]. This highlights a lateral movement risk within containerized/shared environments where application-level flaws are leveraged against the underlying host [10].
- OpenInfra JFrog Artifactory Compromise: Attackers have successfully compromised a self-hosted JFrog Artifactory instance managed by OpenInfra Europe [12]. This represents a significant supply chain risk for infrastructure teams utilizing these mirrors for build artifacts.
- NetScaler RCE Zero-Day: Active exploitation of a NetScaler Remote Code Execution (RCE) zero-day is confirmed [12]. Infrastructure teams using Citrix/NetScaler for load balancing or VPN access must prioritize patching.
NetScaler RCE
- CVE / severity: Not disclosed in source (referenced as 0-day) [12]
- Affected versions: Not disclosed in source
- Fixed in: Refer to vendor (Citrix) advisory immediately
- Action now: Monitor for unauthorized process execution on NetScaler appliances; apply emergency vendor patches.
2. WordPress / CMS Plugin Vulnerabilities
- Unlimited Elements for Elementor SQL Injection: A critical SQL Injection vulnerability has been identified in the "Unlimited Elements For Elementor" plugin [5][6]. This allows unauthenticated or low-privileged attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands against the WordPress database.
- Cost Calculator Builder Information Leak: A new flaw in the StylemixThemes Cost Calculator Builder allows for the insertion of sensitive information into sent data, potentially exposing internal configuration or user data [1].
- Joomla Event Gallery Security Release: For agencies managing Joomla, Event Gallery has released version 6.6.0 to fix three new vulnerabilities discovered shortly after a previous security patch [4].
Unlimited Elements for Elementor (SQLi)
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-103355 | Severity: Critical [5][6]
- Affected versions: Unlimited Elements For Elementor (Free & Pro) versions prior to patch [6]
- Fixed in: Version not specified in source; update to latest version immediately [5]
- Action now: Run
wp plugin update unlimited-elements-for-elementor-premium; check database logs forUNION SELECTorSLEEP()injections.
StylemixThemes Cost Calculator Builder
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-97307 | Severity: High [1]
- Affected versions: cost-calculator-builder all versions prior to patch
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in source; check for version updates available as of Oct 5, 2026
- Action now: Audit calculated data outputs; restrict access to plugin settings pages.
3. Supply Chain & Ecosystem Updates
- WordPress.org Plugin Review Automation: In response to recent supply chain attacks, WordPress.org is moving support inboxes to a self-hosted system and has implemented a new automated review process that blocks high-risk plugin releases until manual review is completed [2].
- Liquid Web "Click2Shell" Alert: A long-running security incident involving a critical WordPress vulnerability dubbed "Click2Shell" has finally been marked as resolved by hosting provider Liquid Web as of Oct 5 [9].
Event Gallery (Joomla)
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (3 vulnerabilities) [4]
- Affected versions: Event Gallery 6.5.0 and earlier
- Fixed in: Event Gallery 6.6.0 [4]
- Action now: Update Joomla extensions to 6.6.0 immediately via the Joomla update manager.
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.