/ 5 min read / Servers and Hosting
Let Nginx Add the Trailing Slash, Not WordPress
WordPress loads completely just to redirect /page to /page/. A small nginx map does the same redirect without touching PHP.
Servers and Hosting
23 posts
/ 5 min read / Servers and Hosting
ISPConfig 3.3.3 Blocks the Nginx include Directive - Here's How to Allow It
The ISPConfig 3.3.3 security release refuses the include directive in the per-site nginx Directives field. The release notes don't say so, but there is a supported override: a custom blacklist file. Here's what changed and how to fix it.
/ 14 min read / Servers and Hosting
Letting Verified AI Crawlers Through the Nginx Bad Bot Blocker
A User-Agent whitelist is not enough to let ClaudeBot or GPTBot through the Nginx Bad Bot Blocker once AbuseIPDB is involved. Here is how to verify AI crawlers against their published IP ranges instead.
/ 6 min read / Servers and Hosting
Rate Limiting Meta's Crawlers (meta-externalads) With Nginx
Meta's crawlers hit one of my servers at 100 requests per minute from 458 different IPs. Here is how to rate limit the whole meta-external family with plain nginx, without breaking Meta ads landing page verification.
/ 12 min read / Servers and Hosting
Blocking Fake Googlebot (and Bingbot) Traffic With Nginx
Fake Googlebot traffic can quietly hammer your server. Here is how to verify crawlers against Google and Bing's official IP ranges in nginx and drop the impostors.
/ 6 min read / WordPress
Fixing cURL DNS Failures on AWS EC2: Elementor Webhooks, WPML and bind9
If Elementor webhooks aren't sending or WPML can't connect to its servers on an AWS EC2 instance, the problem probably isn't WordPress - it's bind9 causing intermittent DNS failures.
/ 3 min read / General
Integrating AbuseIPDB With the Nginx Ultimate Bad Bot Blocker Script
The Nginx Bad Bot Blocker script is fantastic and a no-brainer to install on any Nginx server hosting publicly accessible websites. As great as it is though, I’ve recently noticed a significant increase in the number of attacks on the servers which I administer and websites in general. So I looked into into integrating the
/ 2 min read / Servers and Hosting
Securing ISPConfig Admin Panel the Easy Way
The latest ISPConfig hosting panel includes support for Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificates. This makes it easy to secure all domains added to the panel, but it doesn’t have an option to generate a cert for the actual control panel login. Rather than manually installing and configuring a new cert through the command line, there
/ 6 min read / Servers and Hosting
Using LetsEncrypt With Serverpilot
How to install Certbot on a server managed by Serverpilot for free SSL certificates and enable HTTP/2 for a faster website with automated cert renewal.
/ 2 min read / Servers and Hosting
Permanently Redirect all URL’s to Lowercase
Ideally I like to keep all urls in lowercase, but there are a few things that can lead to your site being indexed with a mixture of upper and lower case characters, which in turn can lead to problems with search engines. How can this happen? Well, for me it was playing around with Joomla’s
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Find the Root Path to your Hosting
Sometimes you just need the root path, for whatever reason. If you can’t get it you can create a php file and include the following lines.
/ 5 min read / Servers and Hosting
Are CDN’s Always a Good Idea?
At first a content delivery network seems like a great idea, but is it possible that it can actually be detrimental to your sites speed? Lets find out.
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
301 Redirect Each Page of Site to New Domain Address
To redirect all pages from http://www.olddomain.com to http://www.newdomain.com in the domain root of your old domain create a .htaccess file and paste the following code, changing the domain name:
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Compress Favicon with Htaccess
Add MIME type and Expires Header to Favicon Add these lines to your .htaccess file to speed up favicon loading, as specified by the Yahoo Yslow documentation.
/ 2 min read / Servers and Hosting
Enable KeepAlive on Godaddy VPS
Another red warning light when running google page speed or yslow that is quite easy to sort out if you are running your own server. First you need to know how to login through SSH as root user which you can do by reading this post. And you need an editor installed to be able
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Gzip Content Through .htaccess for Suported Browsers | Joomla
Compress all files through .htaccess Here’s a few more tips to speed up your joomla website through your .htaccess file. Borrowed from the magento standard .htaccess, which contained some nice code to compress, or not compress depending on the user agent calling for the page. The lines look like this, and can be added to
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Leverage browser caching | Joomla Speed Tips
Enable Leverage browser caching for Joomla websites If you use firebug with either the pagespeed or Yslow plugin, you’ll be familiar with the persistantly red, top warning of ‘Leverage browser caching’ (‘Add Expires Headers’ with Yslow) This can be quite simple to fix by adding the following lines at the bottom of your .htaccess file.
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Set Expires Headers in .htaccess
Set Expires Headers in .htaccess to speed up page load times If you use the firebug pagespeed addon or yslow you will be used to seeing the warning ‘Add Expires Headers’ This can be quite simple to fix by adding the following lines at the bottom of your .htaccess file.
/ 2 min read / Servers and Hosting
Speed up @fontface loading time
@fontface is a great tool for giving your site an individual look, the down-side is that on a standard site, the font is downloaded on each page view. As the font can take a little time to download, the page text is loaded first and then the font is replaced once it has finished downloading
/ 3 min read / Servers and Hosting
Update Godaddy VPS and DS to run PHP 5.2xx
In order to run the next generation of content management systems, you really need to be running an up to date version of PHP. The next incarnation of Joomla (1.6) requires PHP 5.2+As does Drupal 7 (as well as some current modules for the existing system) Look at any new CMS or shopingcart PHP software
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Add Json suport to Php on Godaddy VPS
Today I was updating a joomla site using the MYAPI Facebook Connect conponent to show facebook feeds on a joomla site. When updating version 1.0 of the component to 1.4 I found that the site had turned to dust and saw nothing but a white page and empty source code. It turned out that the
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Add Php MCRYPT to Godaddy VPS
A godaddy Virtual Private Server comes without Php-Mcrypt and Mhash installed. Here is how to install it.
/ 1 min read / Servers and Hosting
Login to Godaddy Server as Root User
Godaddy does not give root user login information as standard, but it is easy to switch to root user in an SSH terminal. Download and run the Putty SSH program from their site HERE. Or download the windows version directly HERE. In the “hostname” box insert the IP address of your server and click