Announcements

Mastering Essential Server Management: Safeguarding, Backing Up, and Optimising Your Digital Fortress

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, effective server management stands as the cornerstone of maintaining a secure, responsive, and reliable online presence. Whether you’re a seasoned server manager or just starting, prioritising three key tasks can significantly impact your server’s performance and security. This blog post delves into these essential server management tasks, which every server manager should treat with utmost seriousness.

1. Ensuring Robust Security

Security breaches carry dire consequences, making server security a non-negotiable priority. Regular maintenance and updating of security measures are paramount to safeguarding your server and the sensitive data it houses.

  • Patch Management: Remain vigilant in applying security patches and updates to the server’s operating system, software, and applications. This fortifies potential vulnerabilities against exploitation by cybercriminals.
  • Access Controls and Firewalls: Implement stringent access controls to curtail unauthorised entry. Firewalls serve as the initial line of defence, sieving out malicious traffic and shielding your server from cyber threats.
  • Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS): Set up IDS to keep watch for and flag any suspicious activity in real-time, thereby providing timely alerts of potential breaches.

2. Data Backup and Recovery

No matter how secure your server is, unexpected data loss can rear its head due to hardware failures, mishaps, or human errors. A robust backup and recovery strategy serves as your safety net.

  • Scheduled Backups: Regularly back up critical server data, databases, configurations, and application settings. Automated backup schedules ensure data is protected without manual intervention.
  • Testing Restoration: Regularly test the restoration process to ensure backups are functional and data can be successfully retrieved.
  • Off-Site Backups: Maintain off-site backups to guard against physical disasters or breaches impacting the primary server location.

3. Performance Monitoring and Optimisation

A sluggishly performing server can vex users and taint your online reputation. Consistent monitoring and optimisation of performance guarantee a seamless experience for visitors.

  • Continuous Monitoring: Keep an eye on key performance metrics, including CPU usage, memory utilisation, disk I/O, and network traffic. Use monitoring tools to nab anomalies and detect potential issues early.
  • Resource Optimisation: Proactively tweak server resources, configurations, and settings to maintain peak performance. Tailor settings based on usage patterns to sidestep bottlenecks.
  • Problem Resolution: Swiftly address any performance issues identified through monitoring to uphold a responsive server environment.

Mastering these three vital server management tasks not only ensures a secure and dependable online presence but also underscores your commitment to offering users a seamless experience. By bolstering security, fortifying data backup procedures, and optimising performance, you’ll be primed to navigate the intricacies of server management in today’s dynamic digital sphere. Remember, a well-managed server forms the bedrock of a successful online venture, resilient against potential challenges.

Your Path to Effortless Server Management: Partner with UKC for Security, Performance, and Reliability

If managing your VPS or server is becoming a challenge, rest assured that you’re not alone. At UKC, we understand the complexities of server management and are here to lend a helping hand. Let us create a tailored plan for you, ensuring that your server is fortified with top-tier security measures, optimised for high performance, and backed up meticulously to safeguard against data loss. Your server’s well-being is our priority, and our expert team is ready to guide you toward a seamless and worry-free server management experience. Contact us today to explore how we can work together to elevate your server’s security, performance, and overall reliability.

Hosting Prices – Update 2023

Hosting Price Updates

At UKC, we are dedicated to delivering top-notch hosting services that exceed your expectations. Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed significant rises in hardware, power, and licensing costs. We’ve always aimed to provide the best value for our customers and have worked tirelessly to absorb as much of these increased costs as possible.

Starting from 1st September 2023, we’re introducing some updates to our web hosting prices. We want to ensure that our services continue to meet the highest standards while accommodating these necessary changes.

We understand the importance of flexibility, which is why we’ve maintained our commitment to providing affordable hosting solutions. While we’ve had to make some adjustments, we’ve done our best to keep the impact minimal.

To address the rise in transaction costs, our monthly billing will include a £0.50 premium. We believe in transparency, and this small addition helps us continue to offer seamless transactions and excellent support.

We sincerely appreciate your continued trust in UKC. These updates will allow us to enhance our infrastructure, improve service quality, and ensure that your hosting experience remains exceptional.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss these changes further, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our dedicated support team. We’re here to assist you every step of the way.

Thank you for being a valued member of our hosting community. We look forward to serving you with even greater excellence in the future.

Upgrading to PHP 8.2: Boosting Performance for Your Plesk Web Hosting Account

Upgrading to PHP 8.2: Boosting Performance for Your Plesk Web Hosting Account

As a valued user of our Plesk web hosting services, we want to ensure that you have access to the latest technologies and improvements to optimise your website’s performance.

One such advancement is the transition from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.2. In this article, we’ll explore the differences between these two versions and the compelling reasons to upgrade.

PHP 7.4 vs. PHP 8.x: Performance and Features:

PHP 8.x introduces a range of features and optimisations that can significantly enhance your website’s speed, efficiency, and overall functionality. One striking example is WordPress, which experiences a remarkable 19% increase in handling requests per second on PHP 8.2 compared to PHP 7.4. This enhancement directly translates to improved user experiences and faster load times for your visitors.

Notable Benefits of PHP 8.2:

1. Performance Boost: PHP 8 is designed to be faster and more efficient than its predecessors. The underlying improvements in performance can lead to quicker page loading times, better response rates, and an overall smoother browsing experience for your site’s visitors.

2. Enhanced Type System: PHP 8 introduces a more advanced type system, allowing for stricter typing and improved error handling. This results in more reliable code and reduced chances of bugs and runtime issues.

3. Attributes: With PHP 8, you can use attributes to add metadata to your code. This provides better code organization and enables you to create more maintainable and readable applications.

4. JIT Compilation: Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation is a significant feature of PHP 8. It can further enhance performance by dynamically optimizing code execution during runtime.

End of Life for PHP 7.4:

It’s important to note that PHP 7.4 reached its end of life on November 28, 2022. This means that it will no longer receive official updates, bug fixes, or security patches. Continuing to use PHP 7.4 could expose your website to potential vulnerabilities and compatibility issues.

How to Upgrade to PHP 8.2:

Transitioning to PHP 8.2 is a straightforward process. Here’s how you can make the switch:

1. Backup Your Website: Before any major changes, it’s advisable to back up your website and database to ensure that your data remains safe.

2. Check Compatibility: Verify that your website’s applications, themes, and plugins are compatible with PHP 8.2. Most modern plugins and themes are updated to support the latest PHP versions.

3. Update Settings: Access your Plesk control panel and navigate to the PHP settings for your domain. Select PHP 8.2 as the desired version.

4. Test and Monitor: After making the switch, thoroughly test your website to ensure all functionalities are working as expected. Monitor its performance and address any issues that may arise.

5. If you get stuck or require assistance simple log a ticket with the support help desk and they will gladly assist.

Conclusion:

Upgrading to PHP 8.x brings a host of benefits to your Plesk web hosting account, including improved performance and enhanced features. With PHP 7.4 reaching its end of life, now is the ideal time to make the transition and take advantage of the advancements in PHP technology. Enjoy a faster, more efficient website and ensure the security of your online presence by upgrading to PHP 8.2 today.

Stripe Payment Processing

UK-Cheapest.co.uk now accepts payments processed by Stripe. This enables clients to pay with all popular credit/debit cards as well as ApplePay and GooglePay.


What is Stripe?

Stripe is a payment services provider that lets merchants accept credit and debit cards or other payments. It is used by some of the world’s largest companies, including Amazon and Shopify.

Millions of businesses of all sizes – from startups to large enterprises – use Stripe’s software and APIs to accept payments, send payouts, and manage their businesses online.

What payments does Stripe take?

As a payment processor, Stripe allows business owners to accept payments from credit and debit cards and processes those payments. Using Stripe, businesses can also accept payments from mobile wallets and buy now, pay later services. Stripe also supports payments in a variety of currencies. Stripe Payments is the software that processes those payments.

Are Stripe payments safe?

During checkout, clients never leave the UKC Customer Portal. Complete personal card information goes directly to Stripe and is never visible or stored within any UKC servers or databases. Only last 4 digits may be stored for your own reference. The Stripe API handles all refunds and obtains transaction information.

Stripe has been audited and certified as a PCI compliance Level 1 service provider, which means it has to undergo an annual compliance report and routine security scans and tests. Stripe encrypts all customers’ credit card numbers and stores decryption information separately, which means Stripe can’t see credit card numbers without taking extra steps.

UKC04 – Upgrade to Plesk Obsidian

Security, Performance and Feature Enhancements

We are pleased to announce that all hosting accounts that reside on UKC04 (Plesk Onyx) will be upgraded to the very latest Plesk Obsidian panel between 1800 Wednesday 8th June and 0400 Thursday 9th June 2022. There will be no disruption to your service.

Plesk Obsidian brings a whole suite of new features as well as the highest level of security and performance. In addition to the panel and base operating system upgrade your server hardware will be upgraded to the latest generation equipment thus delivering the highest performance for your web hosting services.

Access to the Plesk panel and the recommended name servers remain unchanged:

Panel access: https://ukc04.uk:8443
Nameserver 1: ns.ukc04.uk
Nameserver 2: ns2.ukc04.uk

The web server IP address will change from 5.77.32.80 to 195.224.99.184. If you use your own name servers (i.e. not the recommended name servers ns.ukc04.uk and ns2.ukc04.uk) then please ensure you change your DNS A records to use the new IP address within 7 days.

In the event that you have a problem with your web site service or you feel the migration of some of your data may need further attention please do not hesitate to contact the Helpdesk, advise of the specific problem you are experiencing and we will resync your data without delay.

We hope you enjoy the enhanced performance and security of your new UKC Plesk Obsidian Server.