All Servers Patched Against the GLIBC GHOST Vulnerability

Earlier this week a critical vulnerability (CVE-2015-0235) in the Linux GNU C Library (glibc), commonly referred to as the GHOST vulnerability, was announced to the general public. Quite a few clients have contacted us concering the security of their servers and how this vulnerability affects their websites. We therefore want to assure everyone that our server administrators applied patches to all affected servers(shared and dedicated) immediately after we became aware of the vulnerability. Customers with a managed dedicated server have already been notified.

In short, GHOST is a 'buffer overflow' bug affecting the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() function calls in the glibc library. This vulnerability allows a remote attacker that is able to make an application call to either of these functions to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application. Most Linux distributions are vulnerable to this bug, including RHEL 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7, Debian 7, and Ubuntu.

At ProperHost security has always been paramount and we are committed to keeping your data safe.

3 Magento Extensions That Will Improve Your Store's Search Results

Unfortunately, Magento search results are not very relevant out of the box, which is bad considering 43% to 50% of e-commerce customers use store search to locate products they want to purchase1. If they cannot locate the products they want quickly, then they will go to another store where they can. Relevant, fast searches means more product sales. In this guest post, John from our partner Extendware discusses three Magento extensions that can help improve your store's overall search experience.

Magento Lucene SearchMagento Lucene Search

Lucene search is great at improving search relevancy. High search relevancy means customers can find products quickly and as a result make purchases. It is easy to install, easy to use, and great for customers on our shared hosting plans. If your store has less than 10,000 products, then your store is perfect for using the Lucene search extension. It helps improve relevancy and breadth of search by performing multiple searches for a single search. Each search will progressively broaden the match. As a result, exact matches appear first in the results whereas more fuzzy matches appear last. This also ensure more search results return some results.

Magento Sphinx SearchMagento Sphinx Search

Sphinx search provides similar result relevancy as Lucene search. The primary difference is in the type of site that uses the search. Sphinx search is meant for customers of any catalog size (even 100,000+ products) who are are on one of our dedicated server plans. Sphinx search uses the Sphinx search engine which is a standalone search server and as a result it will be faster than using mysql to search.

Magento Ajax Search AutocompleteMagento Ajax Search Autocomplete

Improving search relevancy is not the only important thing. Making search easier for your customers can also help them find products faster and make more purchases. Ajax Search Autocomplete will show search results in your search box as customers type. It can show search results from your products, categories, and CMS pages. It will also suggest alternative queries. The combined effect is an overall better and alternative search experience.

Here is what the ajax search looks like:

Magento Ajax Search Autocomplete



Improving the technology used by your Magento store is important to stay competitive in e-commerce. Extendware offers a range of Mageneto extensions to help you achieve your e-commerce goals!

New EU VAT Rules Effective Immediately

New tax regulations imposed by the European Union require that from January 1st 2015, businesses who sell digital products and services to European customers should begin charging VAT at the rate of VAT in the country in which the customer is based. This is contrary to the previous rule, where VAT to EU buyers was to be charged at the rate of where the seller was based.

These new rules apply to the sale of most digital products and services, such as web hosting and domains names, including all ProperHost products and services. The rules apply to all EU and non-EU based companies conducting business within the European Union.

How does it affect me?

In order to comply with the new rules, we will start charging VAT to all individuals and non-VAT registered businesses based in the European Union. If you currently live in one of the 28 EU member states, you will see VAT being added to your invoice at the rate applicable in your country. For example, if you are based in the Netherlands you will be charged 21% VAT on top of the monthly service fee. Each EU member country enforce a slightly varying VAT rate, ranging from 17% to 27%

Exemption for VAT-registered businesses

Registered companies with a valid VAT number are exempt from the rules and will not be charged VAT. The customer is responsible for paying the tax through the reverse-charge mechanism. If you are a VAT-registered business, it is therefore important that you update your account details with your VAT number.

For more information, see
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm

A note on PayPal subscriptions

If you are affected by the new VAT rules and currently pay by PayPal Subscription, you will be required to manually alter the subscription to ensure you are paying the correct new amount. If you know this will affect you, we would recommend cancelling and creating a new PayPal subscription from the next invoice we issue to avoid any issues.

For reference, the 2015 VAT rates by country are available from this link.