Writing
Notes from the server room.
Mostly development and systems work. Older posts have dated notes on them where the advice has moved on — we would rather annotate than quietly delete.
Your site lost its styling and the server is fine
The homepage renders as unstyled text. The stylesheet returns 200 OK. Redeploying changes nothing. Here is how to tell why.
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PHP isn't a legacy language — your version might be
Rewriting a working PHP application is usually a misdiagnosis. The real problem is a version number, and 8.2 goes dark on 31 December 2026.
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Keeping an election site up on election night
Traffic is flat for months, then arrives all at once on a night when being down is a public trust problem. Here is what we do about it.
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Redesign or rebuild? How to tell which one you need
A redesign changes how the site looks. A rebuild changes what it is. Paying for the wrong one is expensive, and there is a third option nobody offers.
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Why your contact form probably isn't working
Contact forms fail silently. The page says thanks, the email goes nowhere, and every lead in between is gone. Here is how to check yours.
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What happens when your web developer disappears
Emails stop being answered and nobody picks up. Here is what you may not actually control, how to find out, and how to get your site back.
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Hurricane Irma is coming — is your data safe?
Hurricane Irma is barreling straight toward Florida with 150+ mph winds and torrential rainfall. As a person, business owners have to worry about…
Updated note from us
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Apache, load balancers and log files
For most website owners a single server will provide them with all of the web processing power that they need, but when it comes to large and…
Updated note from us
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Website backups — is your site safe?
If you own a business, the words “disaster recovery” and “data backup” are phrases you have most likely heard and that caused some concern. We live…
Updated note from us
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Show shortcodes on your site without activating them
Have you ever needed to show a shortcode on your WordPress website, possibly in a tutorial? Inserting a shortcode into the contents of your WordPress…
Updated note from us
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More useful regex expressions
Regular expressions are very handy for extracting text, verifying text and manipulating text. Below you will find some more handy regex expressions:…
Updated note from us
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Useful regex expressions for PHP preg_replace
Chances are, if you have worked with PHP or any coding language for very long, you have run into regular expressions, aka “regex”. Regular…
Updated note from us
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The writing is a byproduct. The day job is building and running sites for businesses around Knoxville.