Sonic.net

I like BlueHost for inexpensive WordPress hosting. For the last decade, BlueHost is owned by Endurance International Group, so it's pretty much the same as HostGator, iPage, Sitebuilder, or any of their other 1-click WordPress brands.

I also like WP Engine, but it's expensive at $25/month. For that price, you get really great support, excellent security, nightly backups, automated plugin updates, staging and development environments, and several things I'm forgetting. Easy Let's Encrypt SSL. Oh yeah! PHP 7.3 and PHP MyAdmin.

GoDaddy is actually pretty good these days, and their tech support is much better than it was a few years back.

My two clients whose sites are hosted at Sonic want to stay with Sonic, though.

My understanding is that if one website in a shared hosting environment is hacked, everyone on that server is in trouble. https://blog.sucuri.net/2020/01/what-is ... ation.html

Hi everyone! Thank you for your patience on this matter. To cut to the chase:

PHP 7.4.3 is now available!

As seen running here: http://www.sonic.net/~williamt/php7/

Add the following to your .htaccess to enable it. Things to note:
If you are using mysql and using the old_password shorter password format you will need to reset your mysql password. This can be done in our member tools.
Regarding wordpress, make sure you are using the latest version it allows you to update to through the /admin updater before switching to php7. After you update you can switch to php7 and the update to the latest version of wordpress.

If you notice any issues running php7 let us know. We wanted to get this out asap to you because you have waited long enough. We believe everything should work as expected though.

Thanks,
William

—and it works like a charm.

So what you're saying is:

You expect us to telnet or FTP or something into our accounts to change the .htaccess file manually?

And you expect us to:

1) Do this for every single account we have at Sonic that runs Wordpress (I think I have 6).

AND

2) Repeat the process every couple of months when a new PHP version comes out.

Is that right?

So let me be as clear as possible:

NO.

Just no.

I expect as part of the service I'm paying you hundreds of dollars a year for that you will do what you used to do: make these updates automatic.

I don't want any "special favors" from staff to update these files. I don't want to have to ask every time. I dont' want a Wordpress that's so out of date that I can't upgrade my plugins and it's an outright security risk.

This was not a problem in the past. But you're cutting corners on hosting so you can focus on internet access and you're turning what used to be the best ISP in the nation into a joke.

We're not asking you to make this manual process available. We're asking you to make it work without us jumping through hoops.

williamt wrote:PHP 7.4.3 is now available!

As seen running here: http://www.sonic.net/~williamt/php7/

Add the following to your .htaccess to enable it.

Code: Select all

AddHandler php-cgi .php
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php7

Things to note:
If you are using mysql and using the old_password shorter password format you will need to reset your mysql password. This can be done in our member tools.
Regarding wordpress, make sure you are using the latest version it allows you to update to through the /admin updater before switching to php7. After you update you can switch to php7 and the update to the latest version of wordpress.

If you notice any issues running php7 let us know. We wanted to get this out asap to you because you have waited long enough. We believe everything should work as expected though.

Sorry tikvah I didn't mean to imply any of this. This was just about the php7 upgrade in general. There will be an upgrade system in place for our wordpress oneclick installer a little later today. Just trying to finish it up and test it. Will post back here soon.

The only issue I foresee happening with the upgrade potentially is if a custom theme installed isn't supported in the latest version.

tikvah wrote:So what you're saying is:

You expect us to telnet or FTP or something into our accounts to change the .htaccess file manually?

And you expect us to:

1) Do this for every single account we have at Sonic that runs Wordpress (I think I have 6).

AND

2) Repeat the process every couple of months when a new PHP version comes out.

Is that right?

So let me be as clear as possible:

NO.

Just no.

I expect as part of the service I'm paying you hundreds of dollars a year for that you will do what you used to do: make these updates automatic.

I don't want any "special favors" from staff to update these files. I don't want to have to ask every time. I dont' want a Wordpress that's so out of date that I can't upgrade my plugins and it's an outright security risk.

This was not a problem in the past. But you're cutting corners on hosting so you can focus on internet access and you're turning what used to be the best ISP in the nation into a joke.

We're not asking you to make this manual process available. We're asking you to make it work without us jumping through hoops.

williamt wrote:Sorry tikvah I didn't mean to imply any of this. This was just about the php7 upgrade in general. There will be an upgrade system in place for our wordpress oneclick installer a little later today. Just trying to finish it up and test it. Will post back here soon.

Please be aware that for a year or more Sonic has been telling users, basically: "there's nothing to fix because all you have to do is [long list of PITA tasks] and install the new version manually." So when you say the new version is available, this is not a plus.

I don't mind clicking to install it from within Wordpress because I already do that to upgrade WP itself or to upgrade plugins and themes. Compatibility is already a known issue for plugins and themes so I understand that upgrading PHP might also cause things to break and that's just how it works (with any sort of upgrade anywhere).

williamt wrote:Hi everyone! Thank you for your patience on this matter. To cut to the chase:

PHP 7.4.3 is now available!

Thank you!!!!!! You just saved me from switching hosts.

Hi tikvah I'm not really sure how to respond to this but I'll try my best.

This post was mostly about the new version of php version 7 being available which by not having was causing problems with the newer versions of wordpress.

I updated our oneclick installer today to install the newest version of wordpress. It also upgrades installs running older versions of wordpress to the newest version and updates their install to run php7 instead php5.x.

The idea behind our oneclick installer was you wouldn't have to do anything manually. Your wordpress upgrades would be managed by us. When I wrote this back in 2007 wordpress didn't have anything built in to automatically update to the latest version so we built that into the tool. Today wordpress is pretty nice as far as allowing a user to upgrade (it might even do it automatically now?) the install, plugins and themes. If I wrote this tool today we probably wouldn't try to manage any of the upgrades since its now built in. We would just install it for the user.

On a side note your blogs have already been upgraded to the latest version w/ php7 via our software.

tikvah wrote:

williamt wrote:Sorry tikvah I didn't mean to imply any of this. This was just about the php7 upgrade in general. There will be an upgrade system in place for our wordpress oneclick installer a little later today. Just trying to finish it up and test it. Will post back here soon.

Please be aware that for a year or more Sonic has been telling users, basically: "there's nothing to fix because all you have to do is [long list of PITA tasks] and install the new version manually." So when you say the new version is available, this is not a plus.

I don't mind clicking to install it from within Wordpress because I already do that to upgrade WP itself or to upgrade plugins and themes. Compatibility is already a known issue for plugins and themes so I understand that upgrading PHP might also cause things to break and that's just how it works (with any sort of upgrade anywhere).

It seems to work now. Though I have my doubts about the future. Perhaps you're unaware that Sonic has been telling users for quite some time now that to upgrade their PHP (which was required to keep everything up-to-date and from being a security risk) that they had to do it manually. Many of us pushed back on this.

I appreciate that you've fixed it (for now) but it would be a nice acknowledgment to your users if you believed us that it was a problem, instead of acting like I was complaining about nothing.

williamt wrote:Hi tikvah I'm not really sure how to respond to this but I'll try my best.

This post was mostly about the new version of php version 7 being available which by not having was causing problems with the newer versions of wordpress.

I updated our oneclick installer today to install the newest version of wordpress. It also upgrades installs running older versions of wordpress to the newest version and updates their install to run php7 instead php5.x.

The idea behind our oneclick installer was you wouldn't have to do anything manually. Your wordpress upgrades would be managed by us. When I wrote this back in 2007 wordpress didn't have anything built in to automatically update to the latest version so we built that into the tool. Today wordpress is pretty nice as far as allowing a user to upgrade (it might even do it automatically now?) the install, plugins and themes. If I wrote this tool today we probably wouldn't try to manage any of the upgrades since its now built in. We would just install it for the user.

On a side note your blogs have already been upgraded to the latest version w/ php7 via our software.