Monitoring dashboards occasionally indicate low CPU utilization (e.g., 22%) and ample free memory, yet applications may exhibit sluggishness and increased response times. This common discrepancy in Linux environments often stems from process states that are not captured by high-level resource summaries. Every process on a Linux server is assigned a state. The single-letter identifier in […]
Articles tagged: hosting
Cloudflare with Discourse: Setup Guide (WAF & Security Rules)
I run a Discourse forum behind Cloudflare, and getting the WAF rules right took more trial and error than I expected. Discourse is a Ruby on Rails application that most people self-host in a Docker container. It handles traffic differently from a typical CMS, and generic Cloudflare WAF rules will either break your forum or […]
Recommended Cloudflare Performance & Security Settings (Guide)
Cloudflare is a great tool for website performance and security. They have a whole suite of tools to help with performance and security and are a staple in millions of DevOps professionals’ toolboxes. But getting the most out of Cloudflare can be challenging. The platform has hundreds of settings and each one has its use […]
Reduce Disk Writes on Debian & Ubuntu (Server & Desktop)
Every write to disk costs something, whether it’s wearing down an SSD, slowing I/O on a busy server, or draining battery on a laptop. One of the biggest offenders is logging. Between systemd-journald, web server access logs, and application-level logging, a default Debian 13 (Trixie) or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS system writes a lot to disk. […]
Dewedda.com – A weather side project for where I live
I’ve been spending the past month or so working on a hobby project I started last year, a weather and hurricane tracking site built for the Eastern Caribbean. I figured it was worth sharing here since it’s a full-stack project running on a Linux/PHP stack. What is it? Dewedda.com is a hurricane tracking and weather […]
VPS IOPS vs. Latency: Why NVMe Benchmarks Lie
Every VPS provider loves to advertise NVMe storage. It sounds fast on paper and is usually a noticeable upgrade over older disk (HDD) and traditional SSD storage. The problem is that those IOPS numbers on their own often tell you very little about how your server will feel under typical loads. IOPS measures throughput: how […]
Why Small VPSs Feel Slower Than They Used To
Servers aren’t what they used to be. If you’ve spun up a small VPS (Virtual Private Server) recently and felt underwhelmed by its snappiness, you’re not alone. A basic 1-core CPU with 1 GB RAM VPS was reasonably responsive a decade ago, yet today’s entry-level instances sometimes struggle under similar workloads. This article digs into […]
Why Your Linux Server “Looks Idle” but “Feels” Slow
Servers can sometimes appear idle yet still perform sluggishly. This scenario is common across web hosting servers, database servers, VPS or cloud instances, or even containerized workloads. In all mainstream Linux distributions, the core reasons and diagnostics are similar. Below, we explain why an “idle” server might be slow and how to diagnose the real […]
How to Keep ConfigServer Firewall (CSF) Running After the Shutdown
Update: CSF Project Status (January 2026) – Since the original publication of this article, there have been key developments in how ConfigServer Security & Firewall (CSF) is maintained following the shutdown of Way to the Web Ltd on August 31, 2025. The original CSF GitHub repository previously referenced in this article is no longer available and […]
Guide to Optimizing PHP for High Traffic Sites
Note: This article serves as an overview and index, connecting you to previous detailed PHP optimization articles. For comprehensive insights on each topic, please follow the provided links to previous articles under the subheadings below. It made more sense to connect these articles here for your convenience, rather than trying to merge 12 articles covering […]
