As everyone may already know, cPanel 11 was released in it’s first part 5/2/2007. We will be testing various types of configurations with this new version as one of the main new features is Apache2 support. Some of the other things we will be testing are PHP5, MySQL5, Ruby on Rails, New Security Features, and much more. We already have test servers up and running Version 11 to ensure it’s safe to run in a production environment.

cPanel 11 Screenshot:

To keep up to date with our testing please subscribe to the thread located on our forums at: http://forums.hostnine.com/showthread.php?p=1137

Well as it turns out our designer logged in to his cPanel account on his HostNine server and felt the X theme was lacking that and I quote “HostNine Feel”. So this morning I come to the office and find a new header and style sheet for our Shared Hosting cPanel X Skin (Unfortunately we’re going to have to break the bad news to our designer that cPanel 11 is coming out soon and it will have to be redone).

We hope you all enjoy it! Here is a screen shot of the all-new H9 X Skin

(click to enlarge)

Are you a new web hosting reseller? If so, you’ve got to meet our friend Ben over at Reseller Guide. His site offers lots of great tips on growing your hosting business.

For instance, as a startup, the first challenge you face is creating an attractive website. You want to project a professional image, but without breaking the bank. And ideally, you’d like to get something up and running yesterday so you can start selling. Being the nice guy that he is, Ben put together 12 free templates you can use. Our favorite is #8. Incidentally, 8 rhymes with profitable in Chinese

Earlier this week we were notified about an exploit in Fantastico allowing remote file inclusion. This affected any server in the world running cPanel and Fantastico. While we quickly had our own patch applied to prevent the exploit on our servers, Fantastico has released an emergency upgrade which resolved all of the discovered security holes found in their software.

This upgrade was completed automatically on all of our servers so there is nothing to worry about. As always we’re on top of server security and just wanted everyone to rest assured that there is nothing to worry about with this reported exploit.

More information on this exploit can be found at: http://milw0rm.com/exploits/3459

Just want to share the great news with everyone. ModernBill says HostNine is their fastest growing partner! A copy of the press release we sent out is below We’d like to thank you, our customers, for your support. We really appreciate your business!! By the way, I will be speaking at ModernBill’s Administrator Workshop in Louisville next month. If you’re in the area, please join us!

HostNine, ModernBill’s Fastest Growing Hosting Partner, to Present Reseller Best Practices at ModernBill Workshop

March 8, 2007 | West Palm Beach, FL: ModernBill (http://www.modernbill.com) is now the billing platform of choice for over 12,000 technology companies worldwide. VP of Sales Jonathan
McCarrick says hosting partners have been instrumental in reaching this milestone. In particular, he names West Palm Beach, Florida based HostNine (http://www.hostnine.com) as ModernBill’s fastest growing reseller.

HostNine offers an all-inclusive “Business-in-a-Box” for web hosting startups. It includes a merchant account, a domain reseller account, cPanel/WebHost Manager, site builder software, and ModernBill’s billing software for $19.95. In addition, HostNine’s support staff are available 24/7 by phone, live chat, instant messenger and email. HostNine even helps resellers migrate customer websites at no cost. According to Operations Manager Ben Gabler, “we’re here to make launching and growing your hosting business a hassle-free experience.” He says his service is especially popular among web designers and developers who see web hosting as a synergistic add-on.

On April 5, 2007, Gabler will present HostNine’s experience at ModernBill’s 3rd annual Administrators Workshop in Louisville, KY. Gabler, a web hosting industry veteran, says he will share his 9 strategies for reseller success. At the top of his list are creating an easy-to-buy solution, and offering multiple channels for customer communication. To register for the event, please visit http://www.modernbill.com/events.php.

About HostNine
West Palm Beach, FL-based HostNine is an industry leader in reseller hosting. The company helps web designers, developers and other technology service providers extend their capabilities, and empowers web hosting startups to quickly launch and grow their web hosting
businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.hostnine.com.

About ModernBill
ModernBill is the flagship product of Louisville, KY-based ModernGigabyte. The company offers turnkey financial solutions for web hosting providers. Its fully integrated suite of products include
ModernBill, the ModernAuthorize merchant account service, the FraudGuardian order verification service, and the ModernDNS domain reseller service. As of March 2007, ModernBill is the billing platform of choice for over 12,000 companies worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.moderngigabyte.com.

There has been an issue lately with emails on cPanel servers running Exim + RBL Lookups (Blacklist Lookups) as Verizon lowered their sender_verify callback time to 15 seconds which is very low and since our servers run various checks against the blacklists such as spamcop it may take a bit longer than 15 seconds to respond to Verizon’s verification callout.

The good news is we may have found a solution for this which consists of adding a special SPF record to the DNS zone of the domains on our servers which we are currently testing. As soon as we have confirmed that this fixes the issue we will be adding it to the HostNine Knowledgebase so customers can update their DNS zones.

If you’re having these issues and wish to take part in the testing please create a support ticket at support.hostnine.com and we can add the SPF record to your DNS zone for you.