Guides from the NOC

Skip the extra Varnish daemon. Set up Nginx's built-in FastCGI cache to speed up PHP-FPM sites on your VPS, with safe rules for logged-in users and carts.

VPS clock right but cron, WordPress, and MySQL times don't match? Fix timezone settings across OS, PHP, MySQL, cron, and Docker layer by layer.

Site crawling or throwing 502s under traffic? Learn how to calculate pm.max_children and pick dynamic vs ondemand vs static PHP-FPM on your VPS.

Rebuild PHP and Apache with cPanel EasyApache 4 in WHM safely - avoid the missing extensions, PHP handler mismatches, and 500 errors a bad rebuild causes.

Learn how to load test your VPS with ab, wrk, and k6 before a launch or sale, and fix the PHP-FPM, MySQL, and Nginx limits that cause it to fall over.

Planning a do-release-upgrade on your Ubuntu VPS? Use this safe checklist to avoid downtime, broken PHP/Nginx configs, and SSH lockouts mid-upgrade.

Install Memcached on your VPS, wire it into PHP sessions, and fix Connection Refused and Class Memcached Not Found errors while keeping port 11211 secure.

wp-login.php getting hammered by bots? Set up a custom Fail2Ban jail on your VPS to block WordPress login brute-force attacks right at the firewall level.

Step-by-step guide to installing Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP and a free SSL cert on a bare Ubuntu VPS, plus the vhost and .htaccess errors people hit.

Step-by-step guide to installing Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL/MariaDB and a free SSL cert on a bare Ubuntu VPS, plus the errors people hit along the way.

VPS throwing 'Too many open files' errors in Nginx, MySQL, or PHP-FPM? Learn how Linux file descriptor limits work and how to raise them safely.

phpMyAdmin timing out on a big database? Learn to back up and restore MySQL on your VPS with mysqldump, fix common errors, and automate it with cron.

VPS randomly killing MySQL or PHP-FPM? Learn how to confirm an OOM kill, add swap space fast, and right-size PHP-FPM and MySQL so it stops recurring.

VPS running slow or unresponsive? Learn how to find the process eating your CPU - PHP-FPM, MySQL, cron, or a bad bot - and fix it for good.