I have been through all accounts in the hosting and made some changes to the infrastructure that the websites run on. If you see anything broken, or any odd behaviour please bring it to my attention ASAP. These changes will impact your website and email handling (in certain cases).
PHP7.3
PHP is the scripting language which is used on the server to support the websites. It is a type of operating system for servers. The wordpress websites make requests to the operating system for various support functions. Up until yesterday (12/11/19) we had quite a large range of versions in use. I have upgraded all of them to above version 7.1 most are at version 7.3 the highest version available.
Why is this important?
I saw some reports coming from WordPress installation monitors that advised to update above version 7 because there were some security vulnerabilities in the PHP 7. That was the motivation to make the changes.
The software whihc is used to create your website and the plugins within it are updated serveral times a week. There is always something outstanding. WordPress itself upgrades 4-6 times a year. Some of those changes are major. There is now a fault reporting system built in which monitors crashed plugins and reports them. Many of the new features being included require support from higher versions of PHP in order to work. So to rule out the possibility of things not working correctly, I have updated everyone.
It should all be transparent to you, so this is just really assurance that it is has happened. If something is now broken, let me know ASAP.
DKIM & SPF (Affects email)
While going through all of the accounts I also checked the DNS configurations and made further changes because a new function has just been made available to improve security and integrity of email. The following only applies if you are using the email system through the hosting. If your settings showed you were using an external mail provider I have not changed anything. If you are using the mail system I provide then the following is important. If mail is no longer coming through, or you are losting mail, or some other issue has occurred let me know ASAP. These changes listed below will enhance secure mail delivery.
SPF
SPF stands for Server Policy Framework. It is a protocol in email transport which confirms the source or sending server of a message. It is fairly standard, and a way of the recipient being able to filter out junk email. 90% of my clients already had this switched on and set up. 10% did not, I reset the parameters to make sure the function is now active. It is a way of preventing “Spoofing” where it is possible for me to send a message to you with the email address mickey.mouse@disneyland.com even though I do not have access to the server at disneyland.com. SPF can detect this and indicate to your mail program that it is junk mail.
DKIM
DKIM is a more sophisticated anti spam and security measure. It stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail. In this case there are secure keys exchanged between the receiving mail server and the sending mail server and checks are made to establish the sender is legitimate. Those of you that regularly interface with Government servers will now stand a much better chance of not ending up in a spam or junk email folder at the recipient end.
DKIM has been requested for some time, it has just been made available, so I have set it up for everyone using the mail servers in the hosting. It should be transparent to you. Any problems give me a shout and I will check.
HOWEVER
If you have a local IT person who has used a loose policy on setting up your systems and you are sending mail through another server which is bypassing the server which should be used and using an email address based on your domain name, these will start to fail if the receiving end supports DKIM and/or SPF. So please be sensitive to things which have become intermittent. It is better to shout when it happens rather than ignore it. It may indicate an underlying problem somewhere that needs urgent attention.