For more information on this release see their release notes:

http://wordpress.org/news/2013/01/wordpress-3-5-1

All users are encouraged to upgrade and to make sure any themes and plugins are also updated if necessary.

Steven

If you received a notice in October about an outdated script and you receive another one this month, this simply means that – according to our records – you have not updated the outdated script. We feel that keeping your scripts up to date is important and should be done in order to keep your website safe. That is the purpose of these notices, to inform you that you are running outdated scripts.

Once you update a script, and then keep it updated, you will not receive these outdated notices.

I hope to send the outdated notices early next week to the accounts on our servers.

Steven

http://secunia.com/blog/334

which I found to be very interesting.

The article focuses mainly on why software updates on your personal computer are important (keeping Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Java, etc. up to date) and while this is important, this same principle can be applied to other aspects of your web life. Your web hosting account, the scripts you use for your web site, even your smartphone.

An important quote from the article:

“If you do not update your software with the latest security update, you cannot be sure that it is secure. Software has vulnerabilities, and these vulnerabilities work as a potential open door to your computer for hackers, who exploit these openings to gain access to your computer and everything on it – including your bank and credit card details, your passwords, and all your social media activity.
As NorSIS also states: ”Software programs that aren’t updated are one of the most commonly used methods by criminals to take control of private PCs. It is incredibly important to keep the programs updated.””

So again, just remember that it is important that you keep all software up to date with the latest security patches and this will greatly improve your overall web security.

Steven

Currently there are only two versions of Joomla! that are being supported by the Joomla! developers:

• Version 2.5 – Latest version as of October 8, 2012 2.5.7
• Version 3.0 – Latest version as of October 8, 2012 3.0.0

Technically speaking if you are using any version of Joomla! that is not one of these versions, then you are running an unsupported version of Joomla!

I know there are a lot of users that are still using Joomla! 1.5. Please understand Joomla! no longer supports this version and you really need to be updating to Joomla! 2.5. If you are using Joomla! 1.5 then you should consider reviewing the instructions for migrating to Joomla! 2.5. I can understand the reluctance to upgrade Joomla! because it may not be an easy process. However, please understand that if you continue to use an outdated piece of software, it puts your website and the web server in general at risk. A security hole in Joomla! 1.5 will not be patched because the Joomla! developers are no longer maintaining Joomla! 1.5. If you have questions or concerns about the upgrade process for Joomla! I strongly encourage you to ask these questions or voice these concerns at the Joomla! Forums.

While AMS Computer Services cannot provide any direct support for Joomla! As of today, October 8, 2012 we are allowing the following versions of Joomla! to run on our servers:

• Version 1.5.26
• Version 2.5.7
• Version 3.0.0

Note that this is including the latest version of Joomla! 1.5, even though it is not supported by the Joomla! developers. This just means that we will not disable any Joomla! sites that are using any of these version (1.5.26, 2.5.7, or 3.0.0). However, please note, we will not be able to allow Joomla! 1.5 indefinitely, eventually we will have to stop allowing Joomla! 1.5 on our servers, which is why all Joomla! 1.5 users need to be looking at upgrading to Joomla! 2.5. Please consider this fair warning regarding Joomla! 1.5.

If you are not using one of these versions, then your website may be susceptible to attack and as a result we may have to disable or suspend your hosting account. For example, if you are using Joomla! 1.5.22 note that this is an outdated version, you need to, at the very least, upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.26 and ideally upgrade to Joomla! 2.5.7. If you are using Joomla! 1.0.12 then you need to upgrade to either Joomla! 1.5.26 or (ideally) Joomla! 2.5.7.

Failing to keep the scripts on your website up to date means that you will be targetted for abusive attacks by malicious users.

As for Joomla! 3.0 note that this is really more of a beta release. Joomla! 3.0 is a short-term release, meaning that it is going to go through many updates over the next few months. This is not really ideal for live, production level websites. For production level sites, there is nothing wrong with staying with Joomla! 2.5 at this time, however I would encourage you to begin looking at Joomla! 3.0 and getting involved with that project because you will eventually need to upgrade to Joomla! 3.5, when it becomes a long-term release. I would stress that I really don’t recommend upgrading to Joomla! 3.0 at this time, but just that you need to be made aware of it’s existence and upgrade paths.

Steven

Matt Cutts is a developer for Google. He runs a blog – http://www.mattcutts.com – where he discusses some of the ins and outs of the Google algorithm. He made a post way back in 2006, where he actually reference a slashdot post from Craig Silverstein, Google’s Director of Technology, concerning this:

I can’t just deny it? What are my other choices? Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you’ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception–thanks for giving me the chance to dispel a myth!

Why is this important?

You may have heard recently, and if you haven’t you will in the coming months, about the death of IPv4 address space. IPv4 allows for a maximum of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses. That may seem like a lot, but keep in mind the world’s people population currently stand at about 6,973,738,433. That’s a difference of 2,678,771,137. Also factor in that of the 4,294,967,296 IPv4 address space, you have to dedicated about 18,000,000 for private networks (which aren’t Internet routable) and 270,000,000 multicast IP addresses. That leaves you with only 4,006,967,296. Again, that may seem like a lot. But just think, every Internet connection, every smartphone, every Internet connected device, every web server, requires at least 1 of those IP addresses. There just aren’t a lot of available IPv4 addresses any more. We can’t get them, our datacenter partners can’t get them, they’re just not there to get. IP allocation systems (ARIN in North America) are being much more strict with their requirements for releasing IP addresses, so that only users that really need a dedicated IP address will be able to get them.

In order to consolidate IPv4 space, the HTTP 1.1 protocol revision was written to allow for “VirtualHosts” on a web server. This essentially allows a web server to disperse web traffic based on the hostname that is sent along with each HTTP packet, instead of via an IP address, allowing IP address space on a web server to be shared. Google, Bing, and all of the major search engine providers know this. They would be fools if they did not. Perhaps it used to be common place for websites to have their own dedicated IP address, this is no longer a requirement (accept for in case of SSL secure certificates, but that’s another topic, and most websites do not have SSL secure certificates).

If you haven’t heard about the death of IPv4 you will soon. The Internet is very quickly approaching a move to IPv6 which allows for many, many, many more addresses (approximately 3.4 x 10³⁸).

So how does this affect search engine ranking?

Having a dedicated IP address has no bearings on your pagerank. If you really want to improve your search engine ranking, then you need to focus on the content, the quality of content of your website and get others to legitimately link to your site. If your sole purpose of building sites is to link back and forth with the hope of increasing your page rank, this is a violation of Google guidelines, and it won’t matter if you are on a dedicate IP address or not, this type of activity will have a negative impact on your pagerank.

This is discussed specifically from Google:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

So pagerank and search engine visibility is based much more on content than anything else. If you have solid content that people want to read about, this is the number one thing that will move you up the search engine ladder.

So remember, if you want to increase your pagerank and your visibility on search engine result pages, a dedicated IP address is not necessary for this. SEO techniques that advise a dedicated IP address are a marketing ploy used by companies to try and get more money from you. If you really want to improve your pagerank you need to focus on the content of your website and getting legitimate users to link to your site. If you try to circumvent Google’s pageranking system by building link farms and backlinks, then this can have a negative impact on your site’s pagerank, defeating the whole point of the links.

Steven

This is what is happening with PHP 5.3 (and later PHP 5.4 and PHP 6, and so on). We are having to upgrade in order to fall in line with what is publicly available. Unfortunately we do not have the resources to support PHP 5.2 on our own, and even if we did, we would have users wanting the features and benefits of PHP 5.3 and later versions, making it not only impossible to indefinitely support PHP 5.2, but also making it unwise.

I implore you to check the scripts you have installed on your website. Find out what version you have installed, what the latest version of that script is, and if that script is compatible with PHP 5.3. You should also check and make sure that any plugins, components, extensions, or themes, or anything pertaining to your scripts is up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3. We have seen some issues where a script, such as Zen Cart, is up to date, but an addon module being used on the Zen Cart install is not up to date and not compatible with PHP 5.3. This breaks the functionality of the website in PHP 5.3 even though the base script (in this case Zen Cart) is up to date.

Insuring that your scripts are up to date is the best way you can insure that your website will remain functioning when PHP is upgraded on your server.

How do you do this?

1. Know what scripts are installed on your website. Are you using a popular script or scripts to drive your website? Are you using a script that you downloaded from another website and installed on your website? Are you using a custom made script, either made by you or someone you hired? These are questions that you need to know the answers to. We can help you identify some of the scripts on your website, but unfortunately we can’t identify everything. For example, if you are using “Joe’s PHP Website Creator” to drive your website, we may not know anything about it. “Joe’s PHP Website Creator” (this is a fake script name we are using to underline the point that there are many non-descript PHP scripts available on the web) isn’t a very popular script so we have no way of identifying it. If you installed something on your website, you should know about it.

2. Know what extensions/components/plugins/addon modules/themes you have installed for this script on your website. These terms all just signify extra packages you can install inside a script on your website to extend it’s functionality. WordPress refers to these as plugins. Joomla! refers to these as components. The terms essentially mean the same thing. A theme is like an extension that tells the base script how to display information on your website. Unfortunately, these are all inside a script. We really don’t have a sure-fire way of identifying what plugins you have installed. For example, we have a procedure for identifying WordPress scripts installed on our servers. But we have no way of knowing what plugins and themes and extensions you have installed on that WordPress script. There are just too many plugins and extensions available for WordPress for us to be able to accurately identify them. The same is true for Joomla! and any other script.

3. Once you have a list of the installed scripts and their versions and the installed extensions for each of those scripts and their version, then you need to contact the developers of that script and find out if those versions are compatible with PHP 5.3.

Most of the popular scripts, such as WordPress and Joomla! have community forums where you can interact with other users of these scripts and ask questions. I would recommend asking there, if what you have installed is compatible with PHP 5.3. Note: I would not recommend disclosing your website in these community forums.

Some of the popular scripts and their support forums and communities are below:

WordPress – http://wordpress.org/support

Joomla! – http://forum.joomla.org

Drupal – http://drupal.org/forum

phpBB – http://www.phpbb.com/community

SMF – http://www.simplemachines.org/community

Gallery – http://gallery.menalto.com/forum

Coppermine – http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net

Zen Cart – http://www.zen-cart.com/forum.php

Moodle – http://moodle.org/forums

These are just some scripts, there are many other scripts available. You would just have to identify what scripts you have installed, what extensions you have installed, and then find a community forum or contact link for the developer of those scripts or extensions. Some scripts may not have a community forum and you may have to contact the developer directly.

If you are unable to find the developer or any contact information for the developer of the script or if the developer does not respond to your inquiries, then this can be a sign that the script you are using is an abandoned project. The problem with an abandoned project is that it is no longer being maintained. If you are using an abandoned project as a script on your website, then your website may be open to various, unknown, and unpatched security holes. If you find out that you are using an abandoned project, then you really need to investigate using a newer script. You can try and keep using the script with PHP 5.3, but there’s no guarantees that it will work with PHP 5.3. This is part of the price that is paid when you decide to use an abandoned and unmaintained script.

4. If you are using a custom made script, either written by you or if you hired someone to develop the script for you. You either need to contact that developer or research this yourself. If you wrote your own script, you should have an idea of what it does and how it does what it does. I would encourage you to read through PHP’s guide to migrating to PHP 5.3 from PHP 5.2:

http://www.php.net/migration53

5. Once you have identified if your scripts are compatible with PHP 5.3 or if there is an upgrade path available to you to make you PHP 5.3 compatible, I would recommend upgrading and following that path as soon as possible (assuming that the upgrade path is safe for non-PHP 5.3 environments). This will help insure that your website remains only when it is transitioned to PHP 5.3.

These are steps you can take to insure a smoother transition from PHP 5.2 to PHP 5.3 for your website. If you have used the same script for many months or many years without have to upgrade it or maintain it, then this is probably more of a sign that your script will not be compatible with PHP 5.3. The value of a script isn’t ranked by how few upgrades and few maintenance steps it requires, the true value of a script is how well it is maintained, how often the developers release updates to the script to fix security holes and other bugs. A developer or software group that ignores the progression of the PHP language and does not readily update their scripts performs poorer than a developer or software group that stays on top of the latest PHP language developments and how to properly utilize those developments.

Steven

As with our previous post we are making this change to bring our servers more up to date with the current state of PHP.

To find out what server your account is on and if you are affected by this transition see our server identification tool at:

http://amshelp.com/identify.php

You need to insure that all of your scripts are up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3 before this transition is made. If you need help determining what scripts and what version of the scripts you have installed, contact us and we can help you.

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

We strongly encourage you to keep your scripts up-to-date. Even if you don’t feel that it is necessary for you to update your script, please understand that failing to keep a script up to date is the number one reason why websites are hacked and defaced.

Steven

We are going to reschedule this transition to happen next week, Tuesday July 17th. We may add another server and transition two servers next Tuesday, but that has not yet been decided.

If you haven’t already done so, you should check to make sure that you are using all up-to-date scripts on your website. Also check and make sure that you are using up-to-date plugins, extensions, components, and themes. This will help to insure that the transition to PHP 5.3 goes smoothly for you.

Steven

To find out what server your account is located on, try our server identification tool at:

http://amshelp.com/identify.php

You need to insure that all of your scripts are up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3 before this transition is made. If you need help determining what scripts and what version of the scripts you have installed, contact us and we can help you.

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

We strongly encourage you to keep your scripts up-to-date. Even if you don’t feel that it is necessary for you to update your script, please understand that failing to keep a script up to date is the number one reason why websites are hacked and defaced.

Steven

This will begin a move to bring our servers more up to date. PHP 5.2 is outdated and no longer being supported. A transition to PHP 5.3 really should have happened several months ago, but because we wanted to make sure all of the popular scripts were updated to support PHP 5.3, we held off on performing this transition.

Pretty much every script you use should be compatible with PHP 5.3, because after all, PHP 5.2 is deprecated and no longer being supported. If you are using a script that does not work with PHP 5.3, then this should be a sign that it is outdated and insecure and no longer being properly maintained. It may be the case that you are using an outdated version of a script that has since added support for PHP 5.3. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for you to keep your scripts (and your themes/plugins/components/extensions) up to date. When you don’t upgrade your scripts you are leaving your website open and vulnerable to an attack. It is up to you, as the website operator, to keep your scripts up to date.

You need to insure that all of your scripts are up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3 before this transition is made. If you need help determining what scripts and what version of the scripts you have installed, contact us and we can help you.

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

Again we will be beginning this transition to PHP 5.3 around June 5th. You can help to minimize any problems on your account by insuring that you are using the latest version of any script on your web hosting account and insuring that it is compatible with PHP 5.3.

Steven