UPDATE 7/7/16

Due to problems in the security and usability, the following features have been removed from cPanel & WHM version 58, and are now targeted for v60:

• Enhanced PHP-FPM support
  This includes both the UI that was included in WHM and the relevant API calls. In the event that you have configured your server to use PHP-FPM on EDGE, your current implementation will not be altered, but you will not be able to manage PHP-FPM though the WHM user interface.
• EasyApache 4 conversion interface
  This only involves the interface in WHM that allowed customers who were not comfortable with the command line to more easily convert to EasyApache 4.

————–

Since our last Development update, we’ve had a lot of motion. We released a new version of PHP for EasyApache 3, a slew of updates for EasyApache 4, and a ton of updates for the EDGE tier of version 58. Version 56 has been in STABLE for 3 weeks, and its release triggered a lot of useful feedback for us. I always get excited to see people care about cPanel as much as I do. You are why we do this, and your feedback is crucial to what we do.

EasyApache 3 and 4

EasyApache 4 is leaving BETA in cPanel & WHM version 58. If you are running CentOS 6 or 7 then you should definitely consider migrating to EasyApache 4. Next week EasyApache 4 will get an entire blog post to cover its improvements. Between PHP 7 and the native PHP-FPM support in version 58, EasyApache 4 is definitely the way to go for anyone looking to increase the speed of their website.

If you are running CentOS 5 you won’t be able to take advantage of EasyApache 4, but we did release PHP 5.6 for EasyApache 3. While cPanel & WHM version 56 is the last version of cPanel to support CentOS 5, we wanted to give our customers time to upgrade without leaving them on an End of Life version of PHP.

Version 58 to CURRENT next week!

Version 58’s feature development has completed. If our bug fixing and testing goes well over the next few days, we’ll be pushing the first version of 58 to CURRENT early next week! We spent a lot of time on maintenance and updates to the software we include in cPanel & WHM in this release, but there’s a couple very cool new features. The full release notes for v58 will be pushed out around the same time as it goes to CURRENT, but there’s a lot of good stuff. Two of the most noteworthy are EasyApache 4’s new conversion interface in WHM and expanded functionally in the Addon-To-Account tool. Keep an eye out for the full release notes next week!

A look ahead to Version 60

In 2016 we want to fulfill two of our most highly voted features from the feature request site: DNSSEC, and Remote Incremental Backups.  To accomplish these two we’ll be making incremental changes over the next few versions, and in fact have already started.

Step one for getting DNSSEC support is adding PowerDNS to our product. We’ve had a few conversations with the PowerDNS people and have been impressed with the software they’re providing. We’ll be working closely with them. Sometime after version 60 we plan to deprecate and remove NSD and MyDNS-ng. That timeline has not yet been defined, but once it is we will share that information.

Step one for Remote Incremental Backups was adding MDBox (multi-dbox, meaning multiple messages per file) support for Dovecot in version 58. We’re adding the ability to convert mailboxes back and forth between Maildir and MDBox, and the ability to default to MDBox format for new accounts. There are a lot of questions that we need to answer (which we’re working to address in version 60), but we’ve been using MDBox on our own cPanel-based Mail server for months without issue, and we’ve been incredibly happy with the performance increases we’ve seen. If you have concerns with performance related to inode use in email accounts, MDBox may be your answer.

Version 60 will also be the first version of cPanel & WHM to ship without x3 since it was introduced in cPanel & WHM version 11.0 (circa 2007). With the impressive adoption rate of Paper Lantern already, we’re excited to give x3 the sendoff it deserves after nearly 10 years of serving us and our users. 

Below I’ve listed a few more things that we’re working on, and hope to include this year:

* Improving the User Manager, and adding full Sub-Accounts to cPanel
* Expanding the SSL Market Providers to support Wildcard, OV, and EV certificates.
* Working toward making cpsrvd support SNI, which would mean per-domain SSLs would work for cPanel, webmail, and WHM.
* Working on updating WHM’s icons and theme.

Feature requests!

If you have a request that you don’t see listed there, or have a new idea, make sure it’s on our Feature Request site! If your request has already been submitted but isn’t on the list of things we’re working on make sure you point it out to me. I might be able to give you a better idea of what’s holding it up. Make sure you don’t miss any of our updates: Follow me on twitter, and sign up for our mailing lists. As always, let me know what questions you have!