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 18, 2026
EdTech is Getting the AI Glow-Up It Desperately Needs
Reach Capital just closed a $265M fund to double down on AI that aims to augment human skill rather than replace it.
Read article: EdTech is Getting the AI Glow-Up It Desperately Needs→ - Aug 17, 2026
Stripe Buys the Toll Booth for the AI Era
Stripe's reported $7B acquisition of OpenRouter proves that in the AI gold rush, the real money is in the plumbing and the payments.
Read article: Stripe Buys the Toll Booth for the AI Era→ - Aug 17, 2026
When the Desert Heat Meets a Single Point of Failure
A summer storm in Phoenix proved that even the biggest hosting brands are at the mercy of a data center's HVAC system when the power flickers.
Read article: When the Desert Heat Meets a Single Point of Failure→
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: Critical cPanel WHM Bypass & 300k Forminator Sites at Risk
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ALERTS
cPanel WHM Critical Authentication Bypass — A severe flaw in the WHM interface allows attackers to bypass authentication mechanisms. Exploits have already been observed in the wild prior to public disclosure [9].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (Critical)
- Affected versions: Nearly all versions, including end-of-life (EOL) releases [9].
- Fixed in: Not explicitly disclosed in sources; administrators must check for latest maintenance releases [9].
- Action now:
- Run
/scripts/upcpimmediately to ensure the latest security binaries are applied. - Audit WHM access logs for unauthorized logins from unfamiliar IPs.
- Restrict access to ports 2087/2086 to known, trusted IP ranges via firewall.
- Run
WORDPRESS & CMS VULNERABILITIES
Forminator Forms Arbitrary File Upload — A critical vulnerability in the Forminator plugin (300,000+ active installs) allows unauthenticated attackers to upload malicious files, leading to Remote Code Execution (RCE) [3][11][12].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-15748 (CVSS 9.8)
- Affected versions: Forminator <= 1.29.0 (sources imply versions up to recent updates) [3][11].
- Fixed in: Latest version (consult plugin repository for specific patch version) [11].
- Action now:
- Update via CLI:
wp plugin update forminator. - Review the
/wp-content/uploads/forminator/directory for suspicious PHP files.
- Update via CLI:
WP Compress CSRF and Option Deletion — A medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) flaw allows an attacker to trick an administrator into deleting critical site options [4].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (Medium)
- Affected versions: WP Compress (specific versions not disclosed) [4].
- Fixed in: Latest version available on WordPress.org [4].
- Action now:
- Update the WP Compress plugin immediately.
- Avoid clicking links in suspicious emails while logged into the WordPress dashboard.
Simple Draft List XSS — A vulnerability in the Simple Draft List plugin allows for stored or reflected Cross-Site Scripting [10].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned (Medium)
- Affected versions: <= 2.6.4 [10].
- Fixed in: Update to the latest version [10].
- Action now:
- Update the plugin to the latest version via the WordPress admin dashboard.
ACTIVE OPERATIONS & INCIDENTS
"StopAndProtect" Ransomware Operation — A newly identified threat group is targeting thousands of WordPress sites. The operation involves encrypting files and exfiltrating data to use in double-extortion schemes, leveraging compromised sites for further distribution [2].
- Action now: Implement robust off-site backups and monitor for unexpected file encryption or high CPU usage typical of encryption processes.
GitLab Project Deletion Risk — A critical code injection vulnerability in GitLab could allow for unauthorized project deletion or environment compromise [3][13].
- CVE / severity: Not disclosed in sources (Critical) [3].
- Affected versions: GitLab (specific versions not disclosed) [13].
- Fixed in: Latest GitLab security release [13].
- Action now: Apply GitLab security updates immediately via your distribution's package manager or official Docker images.
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.