PHP 5.6 is now available!

PHP 5.6 is now available!

The PHP team released PHP 5.6 yesterday, and we have made a tradition of supporting new PHP versions right as they come out.

Starting today, you can select PHP 5.6 for each of your web sites in the Gigahost Control Center!

While most readily available CMS and other scripts do not yet require the use of PHP 5.6, you may find it useful to switch already if you plan on using any of the new features in PHP 5.6:

Simple expressions supported in constants

Constants are no longer restricted to being a static value. Their values may now include simple calculations that depend on other constants, like so:

const ONE = 1;
const TWO = ONE * 2;

A new operator for calculating exponentials, **.

Curiously, PHP didn't have an operator for exponentiation until now. You had to use the pow() function. Now, to calculate 24, you just do 2 ** 4, which would give you 16.

Argument unpacking

If you have an array containing some items, you can use an array as the arguments for a function using the ... operator.

$arguments = [1, 2, 3];
my_function(...$arguments);
This would call my_function(1, 2, 3).

Variadic functions

Similarly, a function can receive its parameters as an array using the ... operator.

function my_function(...$arguments) {
  print_r($arguments);
}

In the above example, calling my_function(1, 2, 3) would print an array containing the three integers.

… and more

There are a lot of minor tweaks and improvements in PHP 5.6, such as a new way to set the default character set, operator overloading in GMP, constant-time hash comparisons, a GOST hashing algorithm, improved SSL security, and a magic __debugInfo() method to add to what var_dump will tell about an object. For a complete overview, see PHP's New features page.

Try out the new PHP version by selecting one of your domain names in the Control Center, and then choose “PHP version”. You can always revert to any of the other supported versions, PHP 5.5, 5.4, 5.3, and 5.2.


Even more new domain types available!

We are now adding 48 new domain types that you can register, renew, and transfer to Gigahost!

The new domain names can be registered through the Gigahost Control Center.


Automated security scans to improve your web site security

Automated security scans to improve your web site security

Today we have some exciting news that helps protect websites from hackers. We are introducing a new add-on service that performs security scans of your web sites.

Detecting malware on a website can be tricky. Most other site scanners only check websites as they are seen publicly, meaning that some vulnerabilities can potentially be overlooked. At Gigahost we have developed a system that scans all your files. Even when the infected files are obscurified and hidden, our software can decipher these intelligently.

This approach makes the scan very thorough, and reduces the risk of missing any malware.

We use a huge database of known malware files, including the ones we have acquired from many years of experience. We constantly monitor activity, fending off attackers and adjust our protection to match current threats.

In addition to performing security scans, we go through public lists of recently hacked sites in order to check if any of your websites have been included there.

Security scanning can be enabled in the new “Services” section of the Control Center. Once enabled, scans will be performed weekly for all of your websites. In case we discover any malware you will immediately receive an email with the list of malicious files, as well as some guidelines on how to fix the problem. Find out more about security scanning of your websites.


New domain types available!

New top-level domain names are being introduced these days, and we are happy to announce you can register them with Gigahost!

The following domain types can now be purchased from your Gigahost account:

.berlin

.bike

.coffee

.email

.florist

.guru

.house

.international

.ruhr

.solar

.tips

We also added the older .pw and .co domain types to the mix, meaning you can now register a total of 40 different domain types through Gigahost – and even more will be available in just a couple of weeks!

Check the full price list for details, and register the domain names via the Control Center already today!