Hosting Guides & Tutorials

The whole point of testing before DNS switches is that mistakes are free to find and free to fix while nobody else can see them.

Two redirects are fighting over the same request, and the browser is caught between them — here is how to work out which one is wrong.

Copying files to and from a VPS with scp, sftp and rsync, and connecting a graphical tool like FileZilla when a terminal is not what you want.

Handing a hosting account over properly, in the right order, so ownership genuinely changes and nothing goes offline.

The steps to move a domain to a new registrar, the checks to do first, and why the transfer itself never touches your website.

A second, independent check beyond the password, so a leaked or guessed password on its own is no longer enough to get in.

Back up, update one thing at a time, and check the site immediately — the order that keeps an update from becoming an outage.

Where to update the name, address and tax details that appear on your invoices, and why it is worth keeping current.

Check compatibility, test on staging, then switch the live version over — the order that keeps a PHP upgrade from taking your site down.

How to move to a bigger plan from your client area, and what actually happens to your site while the upgrade takes place.

Check usage against the new plan first, then change the package, adjust billing, and confirm nothing broke on the way.

Two ways to get your files onto your hosting account, which folder they belong in, and how to tell the upload actually worked.

Getting one very large file, or a great many small ones, onto your hosting account without the transfer failing partway through.

One file that controls redirects, rewrites and access rules for a whole folder — and one typo in it that can take the site offline.

Composer runs fine on shared hosting over SSH — here is how to install it, run it, and keep dependencies out of the public folder.

Keeping DNS with a third-party service while your website stays hosted with us, and the one detail that trips people up when doing it.

Installing FileZilla, connecting it to your hosting account, and using its two-panel layout to move files on and off the server.

What SSH access on a shared hosting account actually lets you do, and how to turn it on and connect.

Manage updates, plugins, users and search-and-replace from the command line over SSH, faster than clicking through the dashboard for the same job.

Opening phpMyAdmin from your control panel and using it to browse, edit, import and export a database.

Uploading, editing and setting permissions on your website files without needing FTP.

Go through every place a client actually looks, and make sure each one says your name and nobody else's.

The syntax, the common mistakes, and the one thing robots.txt cannot do no matter how you write it.

A proposed convention, not a standard search engines are bound to honour. Here is what it is and how to write one honestly.