Ansible for beginners: automate your server hardening checklist
Your first Ansible playbook: the server hardening checklist, written once and applied to every server the same way. Inventory, modules, handlers, check mode, and verifying the result.
Articles
How software is built, run and kept secure, and what each decision costs the business. Front end to infrastructure: real code, real trade-offs, no hype.
How to secure a new Linux server: a beginner's hardening checklist
The first hour on a new Ubuntu or Debian server: SSH keys, a firewall, automatic security updates, fail2ban and an audit. Step by step, with the catches explained.
API documentation that maintains itself: OpenAPI from code, used everywhere
Hand-written API documentation drifts and costs hours every month. Generate OpenAPI from code in CI and use one file for docs, Postman, mocks and SDKs.
Why security fixes don't reach production: dependencies, automation and overrides
Most of an application's code comes from dependencies. How semver and automated updates keep it secure, and what to do when an update can't.
Database migrations without downtime: expand, migrate, contract
During every deploy, old and new code share one database. How to change the schema without breaking either: expand, migrate, contract.
Why slow pages cost sales: what PageSpeed Insights measures and what really moves it
What PageSpeed Insights really measures, why slow pages cost sales, and how caching, rendering, your stack and hosting decide the score.
Why forms lose customers: conversion, leads and the code behind them
Why customers abandon forms, what marketing, sales and engineering each measure, and how Zod, React Hook Form and plain HTML get more of them finished.
How a PHP request actually runs: PHP-FPM, OPcache and timeouts
PHP still starts every request from nothing, as it did in 1995. How nginx, PHP-FPM and OPcache work, and why they explain most PHP performance problems.
Why software gets money wrong: floats, rounding and currencies
Why floats can't hold money, and how to store, round, split and convert amounts correctly in databases, Java, Python, .NET, JavaScript, Go and PHP.