My Shortlist for Managed VPS Hosting
I’ve been online since 1999. So 25+ years of finding and dealing with a wide variety of web hosts. While painful at times, this experience enables me to get out there and find better web hosting at the drop of a hat. It’s been a while since I’ve written about my web-hosting experiences, so this post is to share a recent foray into finding a solid managed-VPS solution in the year 2025. Shortcut: Not interested in the diatribe? Jump ahead […] Continue reading »
How to Download Error Logs in Plesk
Quick tip that I want to keep for future reference: where/how to download the error logs for a site in Plesk. Normally in Plesk, to view a site’s error (and access) logs, you visit the Logs screen and select whichever logs, which then are displayed within the web page. So you can view all the log information within the Plesk UI. In general, the log viewer in Plesk works great and is configurable, etc. Continue reading »
What Those Three Linux “CPU Usage” Numbers Mean
Just a quick note to self (and anyone looking for the same information). A common question I get for my free WordPress plugin, Dashboard Widgets Suite (DWS), is “what do the CPU Usage” numbers mean? Users get curious because the DWS plugin displays something like this on the WordPress Dashboard: Displaying CPU Usage and other stats on the WP Dashboard (click image for full-size view) Notice in the screenshot, where it shows the three numbers for “CPU Usage”: 0.75, 0.55, […] Continue reading »
Enabling ModSecurity (Updated)
For years, I’ve not used ModSecurity for any of my own sites. Way back when I first tried ModSecurity, there were just too many false positives, so I stayed away from it, opting instead to develop my own fast Apache/.htaccess firewall. But my web host now is telling me that ModSecurity is required on all of their managed VPS plans. Continue reading »
Canonical URLs and Subdomains with Plesk
I am in the process of migrating my sites from A Small Orange to Media Temple. Part of that process involves canonicalizing domain URLs to help maximize SEO strategy. At ASO, URL canonicalization required just a few htaccess directives: # enforce no www prefix <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.tld$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L] </ifmodule> When placed in the web-accessible root directory’s htaccess file, that snippet will ensure that all requests for your site are not prefixed with www. There’s […] Continue reading »
