Section
Guides
Step-by-step production guides, written from setups that actually run.
Article
How we host multiple production sites on Cloudways
How I structure several production sites across multiple Cloudways servers for about $200 a month: one server per blast radius, staging and cloning as the daily workflow, updates and offsite backups with restore tests, and the honest cost shape of the whole arrangement.
11 March 2026Article · Security
The plan is not the document, it is the rehearsal
18 November 2026Article · Security
Your attack surface includes everyone else's
17 November 2026Article · Security
The same AI that finds the exploits can audit your stack
The expensive part of security was always the grinding audit of old code, and that is the part machines got good at first: PHP2Shell was found by AI in weeks after a human audit had shelved it as too hard. A weekly AI-assisted review loop a small team can actually run: dependency audit, static scanning, config drift, patch-priority triage, and the honest line between what to automate and what stays human.
16 November 2026
Article · Security
Technical debt is a vulnerability with a nicer name
The PHP2Shell postmortems showed the same truth twice: the bug class was known for years and shelved as too difficult to exploit, until AI made exploitation cheap. Every end-of-life runtime, abandoned plugin and deferred upgrade on your stack is pre-positioned for exactly that moment. How to inventory the debt, order the burn-down by exposure, and fund it as maintenance rather than heroics.
15 November 2026Article
PHP2Shell: the full timeline, what it exposed, and what it means for how you host
The two critical PHP remote-code-execution flaws of October 2026, discovered by AI and exploited within days: an interactive timeline of what happened hour by hour, who went offline and why, how Cloudways patched every customer server before most of them read the news, and what to check on your own sites now.
3 November 2026
Article
Why your WordPress admin is slow while the site feels fine
Public pages come from the page cache; the admin runs the full stack on every click, so its speed is the server's honest speed. How to check the usual causes in order, from autoloaded options bloat and dashboard widgets phoning out to plugin overhead, a missing object cache, and an undersized server.
6 October 2026Article
Fixing 502 and 504 errors on WordPress
A 502 means the proxy in front of WordPress got a broken answer from PHP; a 504 means it gave up waiting. What the codes mean, the order to check causes in, and the recovery path that fixes most of them: revert the recent change, read the error log, then deal with memory, a crashing process, a hung external call, or the proxy layer.
1 October 2026
Article
The monthly WordPress maintenance checklist
The maintenance hour a WordPress site actually needs each month: updates with the changelog read first, a staging pass for major releases, a backup that gets restored rather than admired, spam purge, error log glance, plugin audit, and a speed and uptime check, plus a deeper quarterly pass.
15 September 2026Article
From localhost to live: putting your WordPress site online
Moving a WordPress site from localhost to a live server: what travels (theme, plugins, uploads, database), what stays behind (wp-config secrets), why URLs need a search-replace tool that understands serialized data, and why DNS switches last, after the live copy has been tested.
10 September 2026
Article
What WordPress actually costs per year
WordPress the software is free; running a WordPress site is not. This guide stacks the real costs, hosting, domain, email, plugins, theme and your own hours, as honestly labelled shapes, anchored on the few prices that stay stable.
8 September 2026Article
WordPress security: the realistic checklist
A WordPress security list ordered by what stops most compromises: updates, backups you have restored, least-privilege accounts, limited login exposure, a WAF or CDN in front, and two lines in wp-config. Plus the plugin inversion and the hardening products you can skip.
3 September 2026
Article
Why your WordPress site cannot send email, and the fix
Why hosts deliberately block PHP mail and WordPress forms go silent, the two real fixes (an SMTP plugin wired to a real mailbox, or a transactional email provider), and SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained in plain sentences, plus why email belongs with a specialist rather than the web host.
1 September 2026Article
Cloudways cache settings, explained without the jargon
Cloudways gives you full page caching at server level, an optional Redis object cache, and per-application purge controls. This guide explains what each layer does, the settings that matter for WordPress versus WooCommerce, and when the defaults deserve to be left alone.
26 August 2026
Article
Cloudflare and WordPress: the sane setup
Cloudflare in front of WordPress speeds up static assets for distant visitors, and whole pages too once the cache rules are right. This guide covers the free setup most sites should run, the WordPress-specific traps, and when the enterprise tier is worth paying for.
20 August 2026Article
WordPress speed: the honest optimization guide
Most slow WordPress sites are fixed in the same order: hosting and server-level page caching first, an object cache for busy sites, then images, the database, plugin weight, and only then a CDN. This guide explains the mechanism behind each layer, which work pays, and where the returns collapse.
18 August 2026
Article
WordPress staging, used properly
A staging site is a private copy of your production site where updates, client work and experiments can fail safely. This guide covers the workflow that makes staging worth having, the failures staging will never catch, and how serious shops keep staging refreshed with real data.
13 August 2026Article
Cloudways backup and restore test
Why a backup you have never restored is only a claim, and how to run a safe restore test on a Cloudways staging clone: what to change first, what to check afterwards, how often to repeat it, and why the test belongs on the maintenance calendar.
25 June 2026
Article
Cloudways server size guide
How to pick a Cloudways server size without guessing: start one step under your instinct and measure, why RAM is usually the first ceiling for WordPress, when to scale the box and when to split a site onto its own server, and the symptoms that tell you which you need.
23 June 2026Guide
Migrate WordPress to Cloudways
Two honest paths for moving a WordPress site to Cloudways: let their engineers migrate your first site free, or run it yourself with backup, copy, DNS cutover and a week-long rollback window. Plus what to verify before you call the move done.
18 June 2026