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.
- Aug 25, 2026
A $35M Hedge Against the Traditional VC Model
FGV Capital is proving that combining strategic advisory with cold hard cash is the only way to get LPs to open their wallets in a tight market.
Read article: A $35M Hedge Against the Traditional VC Model→ - Aug 25, 2026
When Customer Acquisition Becomes a Securities Fraud Case
GoDaddy is facing a lawsuit after a .com promotion proved so popular it allegedly skewed financial projections and misled investors.
Read article: When Customer Acquisition Becomes a Securities Fraud Case→ - Aug 24, 2026
Ox Alpha and the Return of the Stealth Hype Cycle
A mysterious new AI model is making waves online, proving that even in a crowded market, nothing sells quite like a well-timed secret.
Read article: Ox Alpha and the Return of the Stealth Hype Cycle→
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: Oracle Server KEV, Critical Digits Auth Bypass & WP Project Manager Injection
1. Infrastructure & Server Software Updates
Oracle HTTP/WebLogic Active Exploitation — CISA has added a critical severity vulnerability affecting Oracle infrastructure servers to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog based on verified active exploitation [9]. This impacts enterprise-grade web serving and application hosting environments frequently fronting large database deployments.
- CVE / severity: Not explicitly cited in snippet [9], but marked as maximum-severity by CISA.
- Affected versions: Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle WebLogic Server (specific versions not disclosed in sources).
- Fixed in: Latest Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU).
- Action now:
- Inventory all Oracle WebLogic and HTTP Server instances.
- Apply the latest vendor security patches immediately as these are under active attack [9].
- Review server logs for unauthorized access to administrative consoles.
2. WordPress Core & Plugin Threats
Digits Plugin Critical Auth Bypass — A severe flaw in the Digits plugin allows unauthenticated attackers to gain elevated privileges, effectively taking over sites that use the plugin for mobile-based logins [3].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-28165 / Critical (Incorrect Privilege Assignment CWE-266) [3].
- Affected versions: Digits WordPress Plugin versions ≤ 9.2 [3].
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources; recommended to check for version > 9.2.
- Action now:
- Update plugin via
wp plugin update digitsor via WP-Admin. - If no patch is available, disable the plugin until a fix for CWE-266 is verified.
- Update plugin via
WP Project Manager Object Injection — An unauthenticated PHP Object Injection vulnerability has been identified, potentially leading to Remote Code Execution (RCE) depending on the available gadgets in the environment [4].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-78262 / High [4].
- Affected versions: WP Project Manager versions ≤ 4.0.6 [4].
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources; update to the latest available version.
- Action now:
- Restrict access to the plugin functions via WAF rules targeting serialized PHP data in user input.
- Monitor for unusual file creation in the
/wp-content/directory.
Everest Forms Plugin Takeover — A critical vulnerability in the Everest Forms plugin (100,000+ active installs) allows for complete website takeover [1].
- CVE / severity: Not disclosed in sources / Critical [1].
- Affected versions: Everest Forms (specific version range not disclosed) [1].
- Fixed in: Latest version available on WordPress.org.
- Action now:
- Immediately update Everest Forms to the latest version.
- Audit WP-Admin users for any unauthorized accounts created in the last 48 hours.
3. Hosting & Data Center Intelligence
Infrastructure Security & Fleet Hardening — Major hosting providers are reporting significant success (40% reduction in support cases) by deploying automated threat shielding (e.g., Monarx) directly into cPanel/WHM environments to block malicious scripts before execution [11]. This underscores a shift toward server-level automated remediation rather than just perimeter defense.
Service Monitoring Status — No widespread outages reported today for major Microsoft 365 services (Teams, Exchange) or US-based backbone providers, despite standard localized disruptions [5][6].
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.