Once again, Nucleus has made some MAJOR improvements to our shared hosting environment, with many more improvements on the horizon. The large majority of these improvements are already active and deployed to you at no additional cost.  Deployment completion of the features below should be finished by the end of Q1 2017.


Git-Manager

Git Support

To make deploying your website even easier, Nucleus introduces integration with Git – the most popular source code management system. This feature enables you to do the following:

  • Easily deploy your website content by either pushing it to a local Git repository or by pulling from a remote one.
  • Use GitHub, BitBucket, Travis, or any other software engineering service of your choice.
  • Create multiple branches in a single repository – useful for separating staging and production code.
  • Deploy manually for complete control or enable automatic deployment to save time.

 phpminiPHP 7.1 Support


ruby

 Ruby Support

Ruby is a popular programming language among web developers.  Nucleus introduces proper Ruby language support in its Hosting Advanced and Premier plans.

Nucleus now allows users to quickly and easily deploy Ruby apps on their domains. Both Ruby on Rails and Sinatra frameworks are supported.  This feature enables you to do the following:

  • Enable Ruby support on any given virtual host
  • Choose which Ruby version should be used on a domain. Both UI and CLI calls use rbenv utility to achieve maximum conformity
  • Install gem file dependencies via UI using Bundler tool
  • Specify custom environment variables
  • Edit configuration files

plesk_DNSSEC

DNSSEC Support

The DNSSEC acronym stands for Domain Name System Security Extensions. It is a set of DNS protocol extensions that were introduced by IETF with the goal of signing DNS data to secure the domain name resolving process.

DNSSEC was made to help make the Internet a safer and more secure place. Since we are committed to providing the best in security to our clients, Plesk Onyx offers the support for DNSSEC, allowing users to protect the DNS data of hosted domains with DNSSEC extension. The extension gives users the ability to do the following:

  • Configure the settings used for key generation and rollover
  • Sign and unsign domain zones according to the DNSSEC specifications
  • Receive notifications related to DNSSEC records and keys
  • View and copy DS resource records and DNSKEY resource record sets

logsUpdated Log Browser

The Log Browser tool has been updated on most of our hosting servers with completion of roll out to be finished by the end of Q12017.   With this new Log Browser, it is now possible for all hosting users to open any arbitrary log file located on their virtual host in Log Browser for easier monitoring. Users can save any opened log file in the list of logs for accessing it in the future. If the log is not required anymore, it can be removed from the list.

76824

Note that only plain text log files can be opened by Log Browser, binary log files are not supported. This functionality is especially useful for those who install and use various frameworks like Yii, Symfony, and so on.

Another improvement of the Log Browser tool is the highlighting of various files mentioned in logs. This can happen, for example, if there’s an error in a particular file. The highlighted files can be opened in the embedded editor by clicking them, which makes debugging websites even faster.


certificatesSSL Improvements

As the Internet grows and evolves, so does the threat from hackers, spammers, and other malicious actors. To stay one step ahead of the cyber-crooks, security must be the order of the day. Nucleus Hosting comes with a suite of security improvements that will help you to harden your website:

  • Customers can now force HTTPS connections to websites hosted.
  • Connections to mail server can now be secured with SSL/TLS.
  • Connections to webmail can now be secured with SSL/TLS.

Protecting your websites with SSL/TLS certificates not only gives visitors peace of mind – it helps your Google rating as well! Here at Nucleus we run a tight ship, and enable you to do so, too.


NodeJS-Manager_logoNode.js Support

An open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side Web applications, Node.js has been around for just a few years, but has already garnered no small amount of popularity and support. Using the widely used JavaScript language, it helps web developers write lightning-fast applications. Node.js support in Plesk enables you to:

  • Add Node.js applications to your websites with just a few clicks.
  • Easily manage the application from Plesk (start/stop/restart the application, install NPM packages, run scripts, edit the configuration files – Plesk does it all).
  • Have multiple Node.js versions installed on the server (Plesk for Linux only)

nginx_n_iconNginx-only website hosting

If you’re looking for Nginx-only hosting for your websites, Nucleus  delivers. Nginx proxies requests to Apache by default, but it’s possible to turn off Apache and have content served by nginx only.  For more information on NGINX please visit the companies website: https://www.nginx.com/


cloudCloudflare CDN

Within your hosting control panel, you now can easily deploy Cloudflare’s next generation CDN, bringing content closer and faster to visitors globally, at the same time as you block hackers, spammers, botnets, and DDoS attacks.

  • View aggregate Cloudflare analytics for all websites on the server including threats blocked, requests processed, and bandwidth saved
  • Manage key Cloudflare settings such as cache purging, security levels, and Railgun
  • Instantly protect all websites on the server with Cloudflare
  • ServerShield Plus is now available, offering a cloud based web application firewall (WAF) with a single click. The WAF stops threats before they reach the server.

eccryLet’s Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit. It is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

We give people the digital certificates they need in order to enable HTTPS (SSL/TLS) for websites, for free, in the most user-friendly way we can. We do this because we want to create a more secure and privacy-respecting Web.

The key principles behind Let’s Encrypt are:

  • Free: Anyone who owns a domain name can use Let’s Encrypt to obtain a trusted certificate at zero cost.
  • Automatic: Software running on a web server can interact with Let’s Encrypt to painlessly obtain a certificate, securely configure it for use, and automatically take care of renewal.
  • Secure: Let’s Encrypt will serve as a platform for advancing TLS security best practices, both on the CA side and by helping site operators properly secure their servers.
  • Transparent: All certificates issued or revoked will be publicly recorded and available for anyone to inspect.
  • Open: The automatic issuance and renewal protocol will be published as an open standard that others can adopt.
  • Cooperative: Much like the underlying Internet protocols themselves, Let’s Encrypt is a joint effort to benefit the community, beyond the control of any one organization.

We have a page with more detailed information about how the Let’s Encrypt CA works.


Whats new under the hood

The following changes have been made to our hosting enviroment to improve overall system performance and stability

  • PHP OPCache changed from 64MB to 128MB
    • we are looking to moving this up again to 256MB
  • Light Virtual Environments Stats Version 2
    • Better data collection and graphs for your resource usage page
    • Disk cash usage no longer included in your memory usage
    • Nucleus Network Operations is now alerted if a website on the sever starts to fault do to resource limits.
  • Minimum Password Requirements, here we go again…
    • To help protect your information, the minimum password requirements in our shared hosting environment have been changed for hosting panel access, ftp, and email. This does not mean your current password has been changed on you but next time you update your password it will need to meet the following requirements:
    • Contain characters at least 8 characters long and have at least one occurrence of upper and lower-case characters, digits, and special symbols. Example: P@ssw0rd12. Such passwords provide strong protection from brute-force attacks.
  • Passive FTP has been fixed!
  • Main Database cluster has been migrated from windows environments to a faster and more stable Linux Cluster

Coming Soon in Q2 and Q3 of 2017:

  • we are looking into increasing backup retention from 6 days to two weeks (no promises but looking into it).
  • Support for the latest versions of ASP.NET
  • MySQL 5.5 Server availability
  • MySQL 5.6 Server availability
  • Redundant DNS in Ontario
  • Better incoming spam scanning
  • Better outgoing spam scanning
  • Backup MX server in Ontario
  • Memcached for PHP7.x
  • Docker Container Support
  • Purchase TMPFS for WordPress SuperCache!!!
    • Speed up your SuperCache by running it of a RAMDISK
  • Dedicated Mailing List Server
Categories: NUCLEUS.NEWS

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