Website kerfuffle, part 2
My five-year web hosting plan was drawing to a conclusion, and I was contacted to switch to a different plan. From Deluxe to Ultimate.
What could go wrong?
Well, everything pretty much, but it will prove worthwhile in the long-term.
The software that ran my hosting server, PHP 7.1, was released in December 2016 and discontinued in December 2019, so it has now been getting on for seven years since it was last updated.
The latest release is PHP 8.4.21, which is about a month old. That will be supported with critical security patches until 31 December 2028.
But if I switched to a new plan, I would need to upgrade the server software. This could easily break my current websites, and yes, it did. Mostly with old plug-ins.
But one good thing about the new hosting is that it has built-in security certificates that are automatically updated, so hooray. Strangely, the full package is less than what I paid for the securities certificates on their own.