It was the day before Christmas and my family was frantically searching for a missing cinnamon roll recipe. Sorry, not a cinnamon roll recipe- THE cinnamon roll recipe.

Every year for Christmas, my mom has made the same cinnamon rolls for breakfast for our entire extended family. For 15 years, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents could expect a tray of these delicious pastries to bake the morning Kris Kringle arrives. For 15 years, she has had this page bookmarked in her phone to use every Christmas Eve. But when it was time to make them this year, the unthinkable happened - they changed the recipe on their website.

As our family desperately scoured the internet for the original recipe link, hope was quickly fading as it seemed the recipe - and our Christmas tradition - was going to be lost to time.

After two hours of frustrated searching - an idea came to mind - one born from our very own #ReclaimOpen25 and a particular conference session on Replacing a live site with a high-fidelity web archive mirror. While unlikely someone made a high-fidelity mirror of this small cooking blog in the year that the recipe has changed, as is talked about in this awesome conference session, it did give me another idea. Could the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine have saved our single recipe page from utter destruction?

In one final effort, I plugged the original link into the Wayback Machine, not expecting anything, but hoping this webpage was frozen in time by another baker long ago. And then—there it was. The original recipe, preserved exactly as my mom had used it for the past 15 years, frozen in time like a digital Christmas miracle. Within minutes, flour was measured, yeast was proofed, and a family tradition was officially saved. Thanks to the Internet Archive, Christmas morning still smelled like cinnamon, sugar, and home.

Now, as I look back on our holiday, I'm reminded again of the power in archiving. Today it’s a breakfast tradition. Tomorrow it could be research, creative work, community knowledge, an organization’s digital footprint, or entire histories. In a world where content can be changed, overwritten, or erased without warning, archiving gives us continuity. It gives us a way to remember.

If you're interested in archiving your own site, we have a great resource here: Archiving Strategies and Methods for WPMS. While this support documentation lends itself to WordPress MultiSite, the strategies suggested can work for a singular WordPress site, and some even for non-WordPress installations.

Because whether it’s a cinnamon roll recipe or something far bigger, some things are worth saving.

Alexis Block is a Customer Support Specialist at Reclaim and joined the team in 2025. When not helping customers navigate their web hosting challenges, Alexis is likely taking on some new craft project, reading, or cheering on her favorite teams with her husband at the game or on the couch. Learn more about our Reclaim team.

We wish all our customers and community a Happy New Year 2026!

This month

PHP changes coming up on January 5, 2026

Removal of PHP 7.3 & 7.4: We will fully remove PHP 7.3 from our cPanel servers by January 5th. for Shared Hosting customers, as well as sites hosted on Domain of One's Own and Managed cPanel servers.

Upcoming email changes for Shared Hosting

Email services will no longer be available for Student/Personal and Faculty/Professional shared hosting account holders. This change will take effect from January 1, 2026. Read our useful guide about how to prepare.

2026 Product Improvements & Pricing Adjustments

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing reliable, secure, and high-quality hosting services, we are implementing product improvements and pricing updates for our Domain of One’s Own, Managed Hosting, and Shared Hosting plans, effective January 1, 2026.

Support, tips and training

Focus on: accessibility

The deadline for schools to meet web accessibility requirements by April 2026 is fast approaching. This series offers short, practical guides to help you evaluate and improve the accessibility of your website.

• Topic 1: Headings and Hierarchy
• Topic 2: Visual design and imagery

There's also a dedicated live stream to explore this in more detail coming up this month.

Spring admin training

Training for new admins and everyone looking to up-skill in Domain of One's Own and Wordpress Multisite, hosted by our expert team.
Workshop 1: Wordpress Multisite, Feb 17
Workshop 2: Domain of One's Own, Feb 26

Sign up

Events

Find out what's on and register via our events calendar.

Accessibility Tune-Up
January 9, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
We're starting the year with short, practical guides to help you evaluate and improve the accessibility of your website.

Reclaim celebrates Wikipedia @ 25: Knowledge is Human
January 16, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
This week Wikipedia turns 25 (on January 15) and we're proud to be part of the celebration.

Spring workshop preview: Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite
January 23, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
Join the team from Reclaim Hosting to find out what’s coming up in our spring workshops about all things Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite.

“On Writing” on Reclaim TV
January 16, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
Welcome to a new year for our popular series "On Writing", a video podcast hosted by Jim Groom and Team Reclaim.

On the blog

If you are looking for some fresh inspiration, head over to the blog and dive into our 12-part holiday season of posts.

Chat with us about new projects & find support.

And just like that, we’ve reached the end of our 12 Days of Blogging.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve shared some tips, ideas, and a little bit of seasonal cheer, and we’re grateful to everyone who took the time to read along. Whether you joined us for all twelve days or popped in for a post or two, we truly appreciate you stopping by.

This time of year is a natural moment to pause, reflect, and look ahead. While the pace of things often slows down over the holidays, your website doesn’t, and neither does the work happening behind the scenes here. We’ll continue monitoring, maintaining uptime, and quietly keeping the lights on so your site stays steady while you enjoy the season.

From all of us at Reclaim Hosting, thank you for being part of our community and for trusting us with your website. We wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a bright start to the New Year!

... Reclaim gave to me, a new Ghost installer for Reclaim Cloud!

You may have heard that Ghost blogs (like this one!) now support ActivityPub, which means you can follow them on Mastodon and other Fediverse tools, and even Bluesky (via Bridgy Fed).

Get federated... with Ghost

With the exciting announcement about Ghost 6.0, things are looking up for everyone looking to leverage federated social networks more widely. As big fans of Ghost (Reclaim’s blog and newsletters run on Ghost and there’s plenty of folk in our Blogging Community of Practice experimenting with Ghost as a

Reclaim the BlogReclaim Hosting

This blog is now federated

Publishing this right as this month’s Community of Practice is starting: Blogging in the Fediverse with Special Guest Alan Levine! Hey hey ActivityPub on my self-hosted Ghost blog! That means you can put @taylor@jadin.me into fediverse things like Mastodon and follow and interact with this site. In fact,

jadin.meTaylor Jadin

We are proud to say that our Ghost installer now supports ActivityPub out of the box. That's right, what took Taylor and Jim 1.5 hours to demonstrate a couple of months ago can now be handled automatically!

This new version of the Ghost installer is a significant restructure from our old one, as Ghost now has an official Docker Compose setup and documentation that we wanted to align closely with. This is both to make future updates simple and to make it easier for users of our installer to understand and troubleshoot as needed.

If you want to play around with Ghost on Reclaim Cloud, you can use the installer in the Marketplace today. Note that you will need to map a custom domain for ActivityPub support to work properly. If you have an existing Ghost site that you'd like to get set up with ActivityPub, get in touch with us, as we can help you with that process.

If you are eager to learn more about Ghost on Reclaim Cloud, take a look at our documentation:

Running Ghost on Reclaim Cloud

Difficulty: EasyEstimated Cloudlet Usage: 3-5Ghost is a popular CMS that lets you create a blog or newsletter. If you are interested in using Ghost, we do have a Reclaim Cloud Marketplace installer…

Reclaim HostingTaylor Jadin

Have a very merry holiday season and a happy new year!

This is our final round up of the year, so thank you for reading. Look out for a fresh look newsletter at the beginning of 2026!

Support and Service News

Contact us for help & support via our support portal.

PHP changes coming up on January 5, 2026

Here is a quick reminder of upcoming changes for Shared Hosting customers, as well as sites hosted on Domain of One's Own and Managed cPanel servers.

• Removal of PHP 7.3 & 7.4: We will fully remove PHP 7.3 from our cPanel servers by January 5th, and PHP 7.4 by Mid Year 2026. If you have a website on PHP 7.3 or 7.4 at the time of depreciation, your website will automatically move to the lowest version available.

If you are unsure which version of PHP your site is using, or whether your site is set to "inherit" the default version, you can always check and/or the version using the MultiPHP Manager tool in cPanel. Note that it is only possible to set PHP versions for domains or subdomains, not for subdirectories. If a site is installed on a subdirectory (eg, defaultsite.com/example), it will use the PHP version set for its parent domain (in this case, defaultsite.com).

Final reminder about upcoming email changes for Shared Hosting

As we announced earlier this year, email services will no longer be available for Student/Personal and Faculty/Professional shared hosting account holders. This change will take effect from January 1, 2026. Read our useful guide about how to prepare.

2026 Product Improvements & Pricing Adjustments

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing reliable, secure, and high-quality hosting services, we are implementing product improvements and pricing updates for our Domain of One’s Own, Managed Hosting, and Shared Hosting plans, effective January 1, 2026.

Events coming up in early 2026

Admin Workshops: Domain of One's Own and WordPress Multisite
Register now for the first admin workshops of the year, scheduled for February 17 and 26 @ 1200 pm – 5:00 pm EST.

Register now

Coming up in January

• January 9, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST Accessibility Tune-Up
• January 16, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST Reclaim celebrates Wikipedia @ 25: Knowledge is Human
• January 23, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST Spring workshop preview: Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite
• January 30, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST “On Writing” on Reclaim TV

Happy Holidays on the Blog

• This holiday season, share, like & subscribe in the fediverse
• Naughty vs. Nice: Website Habits Edition
• Silent Night, Deadly Night VHS Diorama
• Year-End Accessibility Tune-Up Part 2: Worth a Thousand Words?
• Wrapping up the year with infrastructure improvements
• Celebrating a year of the Blogging Community of Practice
• A Holiday Reclaim Recap
• Reclaim Ho-Ho-Hosting... or when Christmas Icons Go Wrong
• Year-End Accessibility Tune-Up Part 1: Headings and Hierarchy
• 12 days of blogging advent

One of the takeaways from Reclaim Open this year was that the fediverse is not just here to stay, there is a lot happening out there, too!

So if you are looking for some fresh inspiration for all things federated, take a look at some of these conference sessions:

• Combobulating in the #WildDS106
• Things change (or, Montaigne and the Open Web)
• Remix is #4Life: Why we all love the Daily Create and you should, too
• Federating Your Second Brain: Rewilding Notes into Gardens, Newsletters, and Networks
• Small Pieces Still Loosely Joined, Integrated, Federated
• The Fediverse Six Months From Now
• Building Cooperative Digital Spaces: Privacy, Choice, and Community in Educational Technology
• Improvising the future of digital storytelling

Connect with us and get started

Federated networks can be a little daunting when you are just getting started. We've been on a mission to reclaim our socials for a few years now, and we have shared know how on how to navigate federated tools and networks.

Subscribe to our blog https://blog.reclaimhosting.com/ to stay up to date with new developments as we try them. Reclaim's blog runs on Ghost, and we publish regular updates on this popular federated platform:

Get federated... with Ghost

With the exciting announcement about Ghost 6.0, things are looking up for everyone looking to leverage federated social networks more widely. As big fans of Ghost (Reclaim’s blog and newsletters run on Ghost and there’s plenty of folk in our Blogging Community of Practice experimenting with Ghost as a

Reclaim the BlogReclaim Hosting

If you are looking to explored federated social media networks follow us on Mastodon or Bluesky.

We have several starter packs on Bluesky, one for all the EdTech Bloggers out there and one for Reclaim Open, so you can join in and get started straight away.

For Reclaim TV, we also host PeerTube alongside our YouTube channel, so you can catch up with our popular "On Writing" series, and watch recordings of live events.

This holiday season, share, like & subscribe in the fediverse :)

The holidays are the perfect time to reflect on the past year: what went well, what could have gone better, and what we want to do differently moving forward. It’s also a good moment to take stock of something that often gets overlooked amid the end‑of‑year rush...website habits.

Just like holiday traditions, some website habits bring joy and peace of mind while others tend to cause last‑minute stress and unpleasant surprises. In the spirit of the season, here’s our Naughty vs. Nice list of website habits - a fun and helpful review as you head into the new year.

Naughty Website Habits

Let’s start with the habits that tend to cause the most issues over time.

Ignoring Updates

Updates can feel inconvenient, especially when everything seems to be working just fine, but skipping updates is one of the most common ways websites get into trouble.

Outdated themes, plugins, and core software can introduce security vulnerabilities, performance issues, and compatibility problems. Many updates don’t just add features, they also patch known security holes. Ignoring them is like leaving your front door unlocked during the holidays.

Weak or Reused Passwords

Using the same password everywhere, or using one that is easy to guess, might save time but it’s a risky habit.

Websites are frequent targets for automated attacks, and weak credentials make those attacks far more likely to succeed. One compromised login can lead to defaced pages, stolen data, or a completely inaccessible site.

Skipping Backups

Many site owners don’t think about backups until something goes wrong, and by then, it’s often too late.

Whether it’s a failed update, accidental deletion, or security incident, not having a reliable, recent backup can turn a small issue into a major headache.

Nice Website Habits

Now for the habits that keep your website healthy, happy, and stress‑free.

Keeping Software Up to Date

Regular updates help protect your site from known vulnerabilities and ensure everything works together smoothly.

A good habit is scheduling a regular update window - monthly or bi‑weekly - so updates don’t feel like a constant interruption.

There are also update settings in Installatron so that updates can be made automatically: Configuring Settings for Automatic Updates in Installatron.

Using Strong, Unique Credentials

Strong passwords (and password managers) make a huge difference. Adding multi‑factor authentication wherever possible provides another layer of protection.

This is especially important for admin and hosting accounts, where access controls everything else. Dramatically reduce the risk of unauthorized access by using good passwords!

Regular, Verified Backups

Nice websites don’t just have backups, they have tested backups.

Knowing when backups run, how long they’re stored, and how quickly they can be restored turns a potential crisis into a minor inconvenience.

Reclaim users have access to a couple of easily accessible backup tools in cPanel.

• Installatron has automatic backups available, and you can view the backup policy for that tool here.
• We also use Jetbackup 5 to create backups of your entire account that can be used to restore a single site or your entire account if needed.

The nicest habit of all..? Recognizing that your website evolves. Content changes, traffic grows, tools improve, and expectations shift. Checking in regularly, especially during slower seasons like the end of the year, helps to ensure your site continues to function smoothly and supports your overall goals.

Wrapping It Up

Moving from the naughty list to the nice list doesn’t require a complete overhaul. A few consistent habits - updates, backups, and strong security - go a long way.

As you wrap up 2025 and look ahead to 2026, consider this your friendly nudge to give your website a little extra care. Here’s to a safer, faster, and happier website in the new year.

Some people might think Reclaim Hosting is just posing with its VHS-and-vinyl aesthetic across our website. I’m here to disabuse you of any such notions: we take our retro media culture seriously at Reclaim. So seriously, in fact, that we took time out of our very busy holiday schedule to build and install a 4' × 2.5' scaled-up copy of a Silent Night, Deadly Night VHS tape to celebrate the season.

While some liberties were taken with the front of the tape to streamline the message, rest assured the scan was taken from an actual 1986 VHS release of this holiday exploitation classic. Why this tape? It’s one of those examples where the art for the film is arguably—definitely, in this case—better than the movie itself. I can make plenty of arguments for watching Silent Night, Deadly Night, but the real reason I watched it in the first place was the VHS box art.

Seeing Santa clutching a double-headed axe while descending a chimney was sensational. It flew in the face of everything we were programmed to associate with Christmas—peace, love, family, and goodwill. In one fell swoop of the brush, this videocassette obliterates that image. And all a 12- or 13-year-old kid can think after seeing it is: How did it get to that point? How did things go so wrong for Santa?!

There’s a lot to learn from discovering just how far we can stray from what we were told was the “true spirit” of just about anything.

So, for the eighth day of Christmas, Reclaim gives you a real-life, scaled-up Silent Night, Deadly Night diorama—currently live in Trento, Italy, though I’d argue the sentiment travels. From our bad ’80s horror movies to yours: have a very vigilant holiday.

This post is part two of our Year-End Accessibility Tune-Up series, featuring short, practical guides to help you evaluate and improve the accessibility of your website as we head into the new year. Each installment focuses on small but impactful steps you can take to ensure your content is readable, navigable, and welcoming to all users.

As we explored in Part 1 of our Year-End Accessibility Tune-Up series (link once posted), improving your website’s structure lays the foundation for an accessible user experience. These structural elements help users understand and move through your content, and they also support screen readers and search engine indexing.

But structure is only one piece of an accessible website. Visual design and imagery play an equally important role, especially as more sites rely on color, images, and graphics. While visuals can add personality and clarity, they can also create barriers if users cannot perceive them or if key information is only presented by images that not all users can see.

In this second installment, we’ll shift from the “skeleton” of your site to its “surface": the colors, images, and visual elements that shape how users interpret your content. We’ll look at how to use color intentionally and how to provide text equivalents for visual information so that everyone, regardless of ability or device, can access what you’re communicating.

So, how can you make your website more accessible in just a few easy steps?

1) Be intentional with your use of color

While design and aesthetics are certainly important, intentional use of color is just as important. Color is an important piece of accessibility, especially for those who are color-blind, have poor vision, or are completely blind.

1. Check your color contrast.
   1. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 specifies that the text and the background that the text is on have at least a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. To check the contrast of your background color and text color, WebAIM has a free contrast checker.
2. Don’t rely on color alone to distinguish visual elements on your webpage.
   1. Links should be underlined in addition to being a different color.
   2. Buttons should have outlines to improve visibility.
   3. Headings and other section markers should have HTML metadata that distinguishes them (to learn more about headings and hierarchy, read our first blog from this series).

2) Provide text equivalents to visual content

With the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words”, it’s easy to rely on visual media to convey information, especially because it may be more aesthetically pleasing than the base text editor your content manager offers. However, for users who can’t access the images, whether that be due to a visual impairment, or just because they don’t have the network firepower to load your visuals, they could be missing some key pieces of information.

1. Provide meaningful but simple alternate text or alt-text for images that tell users the purpose of the image if it doesn’t load or they can’t see it. WordPress has an extremely easy way to add alt-text that will apply to wherever your image is placed, even if it’s in multiple places across your site. Learn more about alt-text best practices here.
2. Avoid images that contain text whenever possible. Instead, write the text on your webpage and adjust the formatting of the text until your text looks the way you want it. If you do have an image that contains text, make sure to include it in the alt-text, word for word.
3. Provide captions wherever possible to describe photos that could be misinterpreted by the user.

3) Use a free (or paid) accessibility checker

As mentioned in Part 1, accessibility checkers are an excellent companion to manual best practices. While you can address many issues on your own, these checkers help ensure you’re not overlooking anything. W3.org has a list of accessibility checkers that they recommend, and WordPress has a variety of accessibility plugins that do the same. One plugin we've heard users have success with is WP Accessibility - a plugin designed to help with some common accessibility issues on Wordpress.

Taking the time to make just these few adjustments to your website can make a major impact on your users, it’s search engine optimization, and your website’s reputation. Those who ascribe to the UDL framework know, building accessibility doesn’t just benefit those with disabilities, it benefits everyone.

Don’t make your website accessible because it’s what you have to do– do it because it’s what you should do, for yourself and for others. 

This year has been a big one for Reclaim for making behind-the-scenes improvements to our platforms and infrastructure.

Just this year we've:

• Finished up a large server replacement and upgrade project to keep things up to date and performant
• Tightened up our firewall rules to help protect against abusive bot traffic
• Rolled out a new SIEM and anti-malware suite in addition to the WAF we already use to keep your sites safe and our servers secure

... and that's just to name a few of the infrastructure-related projects we've been working on. Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you never have to even unwrap!

We aren't stopping just because the calendar page is turning. As part of our upcoming PHP changes, Shared Hosting and Domain of One's Own servers will also be getting updates that we've been cooking up that allow them to take full advantage of PHP Opcache and Apache's mod_fcgid. Without getting too lost in the technical weeds, this means greatly improved performance and faster load times for your sites that run on PHP. Consider it our New Year's resolution to make your websites fly.

From the whole team at Reclaim Hosting, thank you for being part of our community this year. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year!