Hosting Questions, Answered

It depends what is running, but free -h on an existing server and a look at what each extra service costs gets you a real answer fast.

Match the frequency to how much work a lost day would cost you — a shop needs daily, a brochure site can often go longer.

Creating a swap file with fallocate and mkswap, making it permanent in fstab, and why swap is a cushion rather than a substitute for RAM.

A CNAME points one name at another instead of at an address, and it comes with one hard rule about what else can share its name.

A TXT record just holds text for another system to read, most often used to prove domain ownership or authorise a mail sender.

Email lives on a different system to your website, so it needs its own backup — here is how with an ordinary email client.

Before any update, plugin change, or risky edit, take one quick manual backup — it only has to undo this one change.

How a folder decides which file to show first, and how to change that order if you need to.

In most cases the panel opens via your client area login, so that password is the one to change.

Changing the database default does not touch existing tables, which is the part that catches people out.

How to reset the password on an email account, and why every connected device needs the new one entered afterwards.

Your control panel and phpMyAdmin both show it directly, and a short query breaks it down table by table.

A one-line PHP script and the PHP settings screen in your control panel both show the exact version your site runs on.

Support will often ask for this first, because a stale cached copy of a page is a surprisingly common cause of a fault that has already been fixed.

A subdomain copy gives you a real, public URL to test changes on without touching the live site at all.

How to make your domain accept mail sent to any address at all, and why most domains are better off without one.

How to make one email address automatically forward its messages to another, without creating a separate mailbox for it.

Three checks before you delete a database, because there is nothing to undo it with afterwards.

Generate the archive in your control panel, then pull the whole file off the account with FTP or SFTP rather than a browser tab.

Past invoices and receipts are kept in your client area, ready to view or download whenever you need a copy.

Using the search built into your file manager, or narrowing it down folder by folder in an FTP client, when you cannot remember where a file went.

The unique code your current registrar issues to prove you control a domain before it can move anywhere else.

How native lazy-loading works, and the one image on every page that should never use it.

Export, create an empty database on the new server, import, then point the application at it — the files do not need to move at all.