Archive for the ‘Web and Internet’ category


Meltdown, Spectre, and the Processor Problem That We All Face

Michael PhillipsBy now you may have read about an issue affecting Intel, AMD, and other processors, potentially exposing sensitive memory data. Until now, that data has been assumed to be safe, since a program running on a system isn’t supposed to be able to access the memory used by the kernel or core of that system. There are two separate bugs involved, known by the names “Meltdown” and “Spectre.” The bugs affect virtually every device that uses an Intel or AMD processor: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, phones – essentially almost all computing devices made since 1995.



HTTPS on Everleap

Michael PhillipsWe recently published an article over on the DiscountASP.NET blog entitled, “https: who needs it?“, and it talks about all of the compelling reasons to implement HTTPS (via an SSL certificate) on your website. The tl;dr summary of that article is: You really need to implement HTTPS at your earliest convenience. Or maybe even before it’s convenient.

So yes, everyone needs to use https, and that includes us. We’ve gone through the Everleap website and made all the necessary changes, including forcing connections that come in on port 80 – normal HTTP connections – to HTTPS. You may have noticed we did the same on this blog, and our forum as well.



Domain Registration and Management Changes Coming December 1st

Michael PhillipsThere are some confusing aspects to domain name registration and maintenance, and unfortunately, some changes are about to be implemented that may well add to that confusion.

On December 1, 2016, new ICANN rules go into effect that create another step when you change the first name, last name, contact email or organization fields for your domain. Doing any of those things will now trigger the “trade process.” Which means those minor ownership information changes will now be treated the same way a domain transfer is treated.



Safe Harbor is now Privacy Shield

Takeshi EtoAs you may or may not know, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down the EU Safe Harbor framework back in October 2015. The Safe Harbor agreement was originally reached in 2000, and provided a framework to allow US-based companies to transfer EU citizens’ data to the USA if the company met EU standards for privacy protection.

Everleap has always taken the necessary steps to maintain US-EU Safe Harbor certification, working with our privacy management solutions partner, TRUSTe. We chose to invest in attaining Safe Harbor status because we host customers from all over the world and we wanted to make sure that our EU customers are confident that we are following EU privacy standards. We believe it’s a differentiator and shows our commitment to protecting your privacy.



The WordPress White Screen of Death and what you can do to fix it

Frank CheungWordPress is the most popular web application in the world, and one of the more common problems we have seen with it is commonly known as the White Screen of Death.

When there’s a problem with WordPress, it will display a plain white screen – which is very difficult to troubleshoot since it gives you no idea what the problem is.

Here are some of the common problems and fixes that we can recommend.



SNI vs Unique IP-Based SSL

Michael OssouThese days, the use of SSL has become much more common. Traditionally, it was mandatory to have your website setup with a unique IP in order to use an SSL certificate.

More recently, SNI based SSL has become available and it has caused some confusion. In this post, I’m going to discuss the topic and hopefully give you enough information so that you can choose whats the best option for you.



Silicon Valley Code Camp 2014

Michael OssouThe mother of all code camps, the Silicon Valley Code Camp took place a couple of weeks ago. As always, the organizers did a fantastic job and this year’s event was even bigger than last years. From ASP.NET to SQL to Node to Hadoop, there was something for everybody. With over a hundred sessions available, five thousand developers took over the Foothill College campus for the weekend.

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Working with HTTPS on a Unique IP in a Load Balanced Environment

Michael OssouTimes have changed. While VPS, traditional and dedicated hosting solutions still have some use cases, the truth is, it’s 2014 and those legacy solutions are losing relevancy by the hour. Today’s cloud – the real cloud – is a much better solution.

As with anything however, we need to adjust. Take for example the use of HTTPS. If you’re using an SNI SSL solution, you’re in the clear. The security information for your cert lives in the load balancers and is available to all of the web servers, so there is nothing else you have to do to use HTTPS.

However, if you are using a unique IP-based SSL solution, there are some things to consider. In this article I’m going to cover a few of the key points.



Web about to reach one billion site mark

Michael PhillipsHere at Everleap we use the Windows Azure Pack, so we’re always happy to see headlines like, “Microsoft threatening Apache’s market lead” in Netcraft’s May 2014 Web Server Survey.

But even more interesting than that are the latest Netcraft website numbers: “In the May 2014 survey we received responses from 975,262,468 sites — 16 million more than last month.”

That means that this summer – in June or July – the web will hit the one billion sites mark. (Update: We reached it in early July!)



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