iFastNet is doing a round of upgrades to add new features and better security to the free hosting platform!
MariaDB 10.4
MariaDB is the variant of MySQL being used on free hosting. Over the last few weeks, the free hosting database servers have been upgraded from MariaDB 10.3 to MariaDB 10.4.
MariaDB 10.4 contains various performance and security improvements compared to the previous version, and ensures our database servers are safe for the coming time. It also adds a small number of new features that some applications (like Moodle 3.1) may need.
MariaDB 10.4 has already been rolled out to all free hosting database servers.
PHP 8.2
We’re currently rolling out PHP 8.1 for all free hosting accounts. All servers will be upgraded from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.1 automatically.
PHP 8.1 is a major upgrade from PHP 7.4, containing numerous new syntax features, as well as performance improvements. Having PHP 8.1 also makes it possible to install the latest versions of many CMS, frameworks and libraries, that require at least PHP 8.0/8.1.
PHP 8.1. has been successfully deployed on the first server and is being rolled out to all other servers in the coming week. If all goes to plan, all accounts will be running on PHP 8.1 by the end of this week.
Update 16 September
It’s taken some time, but we’re ready again to begin an upgrade! Many changes have been made to make it possible to roll out PHP 8 on free hosting and to help make sure we can stay up to date in the future.
As part of this, we’ve decided to skip PHP 8.1 and go straight to PHP 8.2, to make sure that we’re switching to a PHP version that will keep us safe for the future.
We’re starting the upgrade by migrating the hosting volumes vol1_7 and vol1_8. Because this is a major system upgrade, the entire server is being rebuilt with new software. This may result in downtime for your site as data is being migrated. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused, but we hope the updates are worth it.