Simba HostingNews –

PHP 8.5 now available

David Anderson — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 12:18:15 +0000

This year’s new versions of the PHP programming language (used by the popular WordPress website system, and many others), PHP 8.5, is now available to all shared hosting customers. You can read more about it here.

You can change the PHP version which your website runs on in your control panel. (Information on which PHP versions the PHP group still officially supports is available here).

MariaDB 10.11 now running for shared websites

David Anderson — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 13:34:38 +0000

Our shared webhosting platform is now running MariaDB 10.11, a long-term stable MariaDB stable release series, supported by MariaDB until February 2028. This is part of our ongoing commitment to running up-to-date, supported software. (Running obsolete software, especially PHP and MySQL/MariaDB versions, is unfortunately widespread across the web hosting industry).

The upgrade went without problems, with only 2 minutes of down-time whilst it took place. Website owners can now benefit from all the improvements available in this product. We are monitoring server logs, and see no problems thus far. If needed, support is available via our usual channels.

PHP 8.3 now available

David Anderson — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 16:22:47 +0000

PHP 8.3, the latest PHP version series, is now available for all customers. You can change the PHP version which your website runs on in your control panel. (Information on which PHP versions the PHP group still officially supports is... READ MORE

Shared hosting upgrade

David Anderson — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 17:39:58 +0000

Our shared hosting platform was successfully upgraded this morning. This brings us updated versions of many pieces of internal software, and should ensure that the platform is stable for many more years to come. The upgrade went smoothly and there are no known problems. As ever, if you need support, then please head over to our support centre.

PHP 8.2 now available

David Anderson — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 21:17:24 +0000

PHP 8.2 (the latest series of the PHP programming language) is now available for all customers. If you are currently using a different version and wish to try it, then it can be chosen in your web hosting control panel.
Simba Hosting still supports PHP versions going back to 5.6 and customers can choose the one that sits their needs – however, we advise running as recent a version as possible.

WooCommerce plugins – all now HPOS (high-performance order tables) compatible

David Anderson — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 14:47:11 +0000

“High Performance Order Storage” (HPOS) is a major change to WooCommerce’s internals, intended to fix a long-standing design flaw in how WooCommerce stores orders in the WordPress database. This design flaw results in stores getting progressively slower over time when orders are placed or examined. You can read more about it at this link. It is being gradually rolled out during 2023 to WooCommerce stores in new releases of the plugin.

To WooCommerce users to benefit from this improvement, all their WooCommerce extensions need to be compatible with the relevant changes. To aid with this, plugins can mark themselves as compatible, and WooCommerce will then advise a store owner if they try to turn on HPOS when their plugins are not yet so marked.

We are pleased to announce that following a round of work to analyse and make necessary changes to all of our popular WooCommerce extensions, all current releases are now HPOS-compatible. If you try to turn HPOS on in WooCommerce and find that one of our plugins is listed as incompatible, then please check that you are running a current version and not an old one. All the product pages linked from the shop include a link to the plugin’s release history (the changelog) allowing you to see the relevant details.

Calendar now available for all email (webmail) users

David Anderson — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 16:24:20 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our webmail facility now includes a calendar module, available to all users with mailboxes on the system. Create events, get reminders, show holidays, show Google calendars, and more besides. To use it, simply login to your webmail, and press the “Calendar” button.

MariaDB 10.6 now running for shared websites

David Anderson — Tue, 10 May 2022 13:39:53 +0000

Though running out-of-date technologies, even years after their end-of-life, is normal in the web hosting industry, at Simba Hosting we try hard to avoid this, and make sure that our platforms are modern and maintained: no corner-cutting.

As part of this commitment, our shared web database platform has been upgraded from MariaDB 10.5 to MariaDB 10.6 (the current long-term stable release which is planned to be maintained by the MariaDB authors until July 2026).

The upgrade has gone smoothly, with only 2 minutes of down-time whilst it was being performed. Website owners can now benefit from all the improvements available in this product. We are monitoring server logs, and see no problems thus far. If needed, support is available via our usual channels.

MariaDB upgraded to version 10.5

David Anderson — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 13:40:01 +0000

Simba Hosting are committed to providing current technologies, not allowing our platform to slowly rot over the years, as is too common in the industry. As part of this commitment, the database server (MariaDB) has been upgraded on our main web hosting platform, from MariaDB 10.4 to 10.5. Information on improvements in MariaDB 10.5 is available here. We do not expect any issues with customer websites, but if you encounter any problems, please do use our support facilities.

Email outage caused by storage failure – now resolved

David Anderson — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 08:47:11 +0000

Most customer email services are currently out of action, both receiving and sending (POP3, IMAP, SMTP, webmail). This is due to a malfunctioning network storage device at the datacentre hosting these services. This is currently being given our full attention (and affects our email as much as everyone else’s). As yet there is no current prediction on the time when services will be restored, but rest assured that it will be as soon as possible.

We apologise for all inconvenience experienced (which we share in; our own email is on the same platform as used by our customers).

Update:The root cause has been identified and a fix is being worked on.

Update 13:56 GMT:This issue is now fixed, and email is now being collected and delivered normally. You may need to wait a few minutes for the queues of incoming mail to finish delivering into your inboxes. We do not have a full report from the datacentre at this point but will analyse carefully information as we receive it. Please raise a support ticket if you are still experiencing any problems.