PHP 8.2 is now available to all Varial Hosting customers.
PHP 8 builds upon the great improvements brought forward in PHP 7 and introduces several new features for developers which you can read about at: https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration82.php
Please be aware that not all web applications and PHP extensions are compatible with PHP 8.2 at this time. For best compatibility we recommend using PHP 8.1 until development of PHP 8.2 matures.
Horde Webmail will be removed from cPanel in the coming months, upon upgrade to version 108 or later of cPanel. This is due to Horde not supporting PHP 8, while PHP 7 reaches its end of life in November 2022. Additionally, critical security vulnerabilities were discovered in Horde over the past year which required us to disable Horde for several weeks until security patches were released.
cPanel will be focusing on RoundCube Webmail going forward and are developing tools that will migrate Horde calendar and contact data to RoundCube upon upgrade to cPanel v108 or later.
If you are currently a Horde Webmail user, we recommend switching to RoundCube the next time you log into Webmail.
PHP 8.1 is now available to all Varial Hosting customers.
PHP 8 builds upon the great improvements brought forward in PHP 7 and introduces several new features for developers which you can read about at: https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration81.php
Please be aware that not all web applications and PHP extensions are compatible with PHP 8.1 at this time. For best compatibility we recommend using PHP 7.4 until development of PHP 8 matures.
Over the weekend CloudFlare made breaking changes to their hosting partner program without providing advanced notice.
Effective immediately it will no longer be possible for Varial Hosting customers to manage CloudFlare services through your cPanel control panel and we will no longer be offering CloudFlare’s content delivery network as an option that can be enabled for new hosting plan orders.
I use CloudFlare, what does this mean for me?
All CloudFlare services will continue to function and will remain enabled for websites currently using their content delivery network.
However, to manage your CloudFlare services you must now login at cloudflare.com as you can no longer access your CloudFlare content delivery network settings through your cPanel control panel. This will be necessary for tasks like purging your CloudFlare cache.
If you do not know your CloudFlare login you can request a password reset from their website.
How do I completely disable CloudFlare?
While existing users can continue to use the CloudFlare content delivery network without interruption, if you would like to completely disable CloudFlare, please contact our Support department and we’ll modify your domain’s DNS records to remove CloudFlare for you.
How do I enable CloudFlare on a new website?
If you wish to enable CloudFlare’s content delivery network on a new website you must now sign up for an account at cloudflare.com and follow their setup instructions. CloudFlare offers both free and paid product tiers.
You will be required to change your domain’s name servers and use CloudFlare for DNS management in order to use their service. It is no longer possible to enable CloudFlare on a new website without switching to their DNS service.
PHP 8.0 is now available to all Varial Hosting customers.
PHP 8 builds upon the great improvements brought forward in PHP 7 and introduces several new features for developers which you can read about at: https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration80.php
Please be aware that not all web applications and PHP extensions are compatible with PHP 8.0 at this time. For best compatibility we recommend using PHP 7.4 until development of PHP 8 matures.
The latest major version of cPanel is now available to all Varial Hosting customers. While most changes are backend improvements, RoundCube Webmail users will be excited to discover its new, modern theme that has been designed to be responsive when viewed on devices of all form factors.
Last fall we introduced a new, highly-anticipated feature for our MailScanner spam scanner — the ability to automatically move spam emails to a special Spam folder within your email accounts.
This allows customers to keep their inboxes free of spam, while providing a convenient way to review emails that have been flagged as spam.
Currently our MailScanner spam scanner is configured to deliver low-scoring spam and update the subject line of the email to identify it as potential spam.
On Thursday, April 1, 2021, we will change the default settings of our spam scanner to automatically move low-scoring spam emails to a Spam folder within your email accounts.
The Spam folder can either be accessed through Webmail or with an IMAP email client on your computer/device to allow you to easily review emails that have been flagged as spam.
To prevent your email accounts from growing excessively large, emails within your Spam folder will be automatically purged after 60 days.
Please note that your spam scanner settings will only be changed on April 1st if you are currently using our default settings. If you have made any modifications to your MailScanner settings in the past your custom settings will remain in place and this change will not be applied to your account unless you manually update your MailScanner settings in cPanel to enable the new SpamBox feature.
For the early adopters out there, PHP 7.4 is now available across all of our servers.
PHP 7.4 builds upon the great improvements brought forward in PHP 7 and introduces several new features for developers which you can read about at: http://php.net/manual/en/migration74.php
Please be aware that not all web applications and PHP extensions are compatible with PHP 7.4 at this time. For best compatibility we recommend using PHP 7.2 or 7.3 until development of PHP 7.4 matures.
Extensive optimizations have been made to our web servers that have improved HTTP/2 performance by over 500%!
In benchmarks taken from http2benchmark.org, a WordPress site using our LiteSpeed Cache plugin loads up to 78X faster than a WordPress site running on the open source Apache web server with the W3TotalCache plugin enabled (a popular configuration with most other hosting companies).
This is the benefit of our next generation hosting platform!
HTTP/2 is used only when accessing websites over HTTPS.
Have you switched your website from HTTP to HTTPS yet? Put this to the top of your list to resolve “Not Secure” browser warnings and to reap these amazing performance improvements!
The latest major release of cPanel is now available to all Varial Hosting customers. Version 78 features improvements to the Email Accounts interface and a new tool called Email Deliverability to manage DKIM keys and SPF records. As previously announced, v78 also removes SquirrelMail from our Webmail options due to the project being abandoned by its original developers. The next time you log into Webmail, SquirrelMail users will be asked to select between our RoundCube (our personal favourite) and Horde Webmail applications.
