We recently added some new features for our web hosting customers, so here’s a summary of everything that’s been happening here at Websoftnet.

PHP 5 is becoming our default version in September

We’ve updated our default version of PHP from 4 to 5. Those of you running legacy software that won’t work on PHP 5, you’ll need to add a line of code to your .htaccess file  – see our blog entry for more info.

One-click WordPress 3.0.1 and BuddyPress 1.2.5.2 now available

Our web hosting customers can now take advantage of a one-click install of the popular blogging software WordPress 3.0.1 and the social communication script BuddyPress 1.2.5.2. Simply log into your eXtend panel and scroll down to ‘CGI scripts’ for a fresh install in just a few seconds.

For more information on this change, click here: WordPress one-click installs.

One-click Zen Cart v1.3.9f and Drupal 6.19

One-click installs of Zen Cart and Drupal have also been updated so you can take advantage of the latest releases. The software can be found in the ‘CGI scripts’ area of your control panel, and our one-click install means you can enjoy great ecommerce and content management systems within seconds.

File permission checker added to eXtend

Our  eXtend control panel now have a new feature called ‘Check Site Permissions’. This new feature has been added to let you bulk check your websites file permissions without having to go through them all manually one by one. For further details, check out the blog post.

One-click installation of WordPress 3.0.1 is now available for Websoftnet web hosting customers. To install, simply log into your eXtend control panel and scroll down to ‘CGI Scripts’ for a one-click install and set up of your WordPress blog.

Customers with Windows hosting still have WordPress 2.9.2 as their one-click WordPress install, but we are looking to update this in the next few weeks).

As well as replacing WordPress 2.9.2, WordPress 3.0 also replaces WordPress MU (the multi-user version), as the multi-user features have been merged into WP as standard. Other new features in WordPress 3.0 include custom post types, unique author templates (great for multi-user blogs), improved menu management, a new default theme and support for the wp.me URL shortener. You can check out the complete list of the hundreds of new features and improvements in the WordPress 3.0 codex.

If you’re wondering about how to take advantage of some of these features, How to: Enable WordPress 3.0 New Features After Upgrading has lots of great links to help you get started.

Social Network Sites

Social networking is all the rage nowadays and Facebook has recently become the most searched for brand and 2nd most visited site in the UK (Source: Hitwise).

According to Hitwise, “Social networks now account for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits and 1 in every 5 page views. Only search engines receive more UK Internet visits than social networks.”

This is only set to continue as the social networks targeting specific niches explode on to the scene catering for the personal tastes and interests of users in a way the large generic social networks can’t. The niches within the niches of Music, cooking, travel, web design, sport, fashion, geographic locations, science… etc are all up for grabs.

Start your own social network
Always ones to make sure our customers  are able to take advantage of the latest web developments you can now create your own social network, quickly and easily with only a few clicks.

Our recent addition to our already massive library of one click install programs is “Elgg”.  Elgg allows you to take full advantage of the power of social technology with elegant, flexible solutions for organisations, groups and individuals.

This new addition joins an already impressive list (small selection below)…

• WordPress
• Joomla
• phpBB3 forums
• Sugar CRM
• Drupal CMS
• PHPcoin
• MediaWiki
• Openads
• Mambo CMS
• Coppermine Photo Gallery
• Form to Email
• osTicket
• dotProject

Elgg is 100% free with our Unlimited web hosting packages

We have made a few updates to the system today, the main one is that you can now unzip zip files in the eXtend file manager. This is handy if you have downloaded a new CGI/PHP package you wish to install or if you are uploading lots of images. Just right click on the zip file and choose “Unzip” from the menu.

A couple of the CGI scripts you can install from eXtend have also been updated:

- ZenCart has been upgraded from 1.3.7 to 1.3.8
- OpenAds from 2.4.0 to 2.4.7.