This month was good to the cPanel development team. With cPanel & WHM version 58 in CURRENT, we’re laser focused on fixing bugs and building new features for version 60. We’re hoping to see version 58 make it to RELEASE next week, which will allow us to release a public build of version 60 for the EDGE tier, and we’re very close to publishing a new plugin. There’s a lot of motion, so let’s take a look!

AutoSSL and Let’s Encrypt support

AutoSSL is a new feature included as part of cPanel & WHM version 58. This feature, when enabled, automatically installs DV SSLs that are backed by COMODO. As soon as Let’s Encrypt came on the scene, we knew that we wanted to be able to support Let’s Encrypt in AutoSSL as well. We also knew that it could take Let’s Encrypt’s code a while to stabilize, though. That meant that we had to be able to adjust our code for any changes made by Let’s Encrypt quickly. Much more quickly than our typical development cycle would allow. What we’ve decided to do is allow Let’s Encrypt support for AutoSSL through a cPanel-provided plugin. Our original plan included a plugin that would support 56 and above, but due to some problems that would cause a compromise in quality the plugin will only support 58 and above.

The current plan is to release the plugin in RPM form to the general public in the next few weeks, and add it to the WHM ‘Manage Plugins’ interface in version 60. If you want to know when the plugin is released, subscribe to the Let’s Encrypt feature request.

Deprecations and Removals

As is the nature of technology, we’re letting some very old parts of cPanel & WHM go in order to make room for new improvements to be added. For example, if your server is running on CentOS 5 or a 32-bit OS, you won’t be able to upgrade to version 58. Similarly, both x3 and EasyApache 3 are on their way out.

Related: if you are still using x3, and aren’t ready to upgrade to Paper Lantern, we want to know what’s holding you back. Send me an email, and help us make Paper Lantern a better solution for everyone.

Anticipated features in cPanel & WHM version 60

It’s still a bit early to be absolutely sure about these features, but here’s what we’ve got so far.

PowerDNS

PowerDNS is a robust and proven technology, that’s been around almost as long as cPanel. Our current plan is to add PowerDNS to the product, and work toward removing NSD and MyDNS. cPanel & WHM version 60 will only include support for PowerDNS in a full cPanel & WHM server. DNSOnly support will be added in a later release. We will provide internal migration from all of our currently supported systems to PowerDNS. If you prefer one of the other applications over PowerDNS, please (PLEASE!) send me an email. I want to hear about it! With your input we can either solve any problems or adjust appropriately.

If you want to follow the progress of this feature, be sure to subscribe to the feature request.

DNSSEC

The addition of PowerDNS makes it very easy to also add DNSSEC support. In case you aren’t familiar with DNSSEC, the simplest explanation is that it’s an improvement to the original DNS system that increases the security of DNS lookups. This addition is just in its infancy, so I’ll hopefully have a lot more information about this next month. Additionally, I’ll update the DNSSEC feature request as soon as this is available in a public EDGE build. If you want to keep tabs on it, make sure you subscribe there.

Account creation and termination speedups

We’ve heard from a lot of our customers (and our QA team) that account creations and terminations were slow, and cumbersome. We have already spent a good amount of time on this one, and have been able to reduce account creation and termination times drastically. I can’t wait for all of our users to be able to benefit from these improvements.

Some more stuff

Here are a few of the other features from the feature request site that we’re working on for inclusion v60.

See you next week!

If you are going to HostingCon next week in New Orleans, you should definitely find me on the floor Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll be wandering around in my blazing cPanel orange shirt, and I want to hear from you. If telling me your (least or most) favorite thing about cPanel & WHM isn’t enough motivation, I’ll be starting each day with 10 $25 amazon gift cards. How do you earn one? Simply by helping me improve the product!

cPanel & WHM version 58 is in CURRENT, and is headed to RELEASE soon. If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, you should!