Blog

Scripting Background Scripts on Kinsta

One of my favorite SSH commands with Kinsta is screen. I use it quite frequently to handle long running scripts like site migrations and image optimizations. I’ve often wondered if it would be possible to put screen inside of a shell script instead of manually running it from the command line. Today that’s just…

Over The Air Shell Scripts

So you just finished writing this super awesome shell script, now the question is “How do I run it?”. There are many ways you can run a shell script. You can run a script locally, run a local script on a remote server via ssh, or you can copy and run it directly on…

Lightning Fast WordPress Themes ⚡

When building WordPress websites for customers, I feel the best approach is to do a custom designed and developed theme using something like Underscores as a starter theme combined with Advanced Custom Fields. There is just nothing like building up a website from scratch with just the features that the customer needs. No bloat…

Configuring Vanity Nameservers

I’ve been using a premium DNS provider since 2014 and only recently switched to use vanity nameservers. This will be a walk through showing the steps I took to setup vanity nameservers using Constellix (DNS Provider) and Hover (Domain Provider) for anchor.host. Step 1: Add new A records to primary domain. First find the…

Announcing Vanity Nameservers

Announcement

I’ve finally done it. I’ve setup vanity nameservers for Anchor Hosting. Effective immediately all customers can use these branded nameservers rather then the previous Constellix nameservers. The DNS provider is still Constellix. Constellix is an amazing DNS provider. Literally zero performance or reliable issues. I have no reason to switch to another provider. Under…

Consolidating Mailgun Accounts

On March 1st 2020, Mailgun will be phasing out their free tier. I’m a happy paying Mailgun customer. How is this going to affect me? Well, over the last several years I created a number of separate free Mailgun accounts for various hosting customers. All these free accounts have my credit card details on…

Custom Development Without Child Theming Or Custom Plugins

Let’s say you want to use a simple WordPress theme like Blocksy, yet you want to add a bit of custom functionality. What are your options? Well the most logical thing to do would be to create a child theme with custom layouts. Another option would be to build a custom WordPress plugin. Both…

WordPress Routing Hacks for Single Page Applications

If you’ve ever attempted to bundle a Javascript single page application (SPA) inside of WordPress, you’ll likely run into the issue of routing. The problem isn’t that JS frameworks can’t route properly, the question is how do you get WordPress to send all web requests pertaining to the SPA to the SPA. Let’s say…

Debugging Slow DNS Rollouts

Ever launch a new website and run into DNS delays? Ever curious what’s happening under the hood? Let’s take a closer look and DNS updates and some tips for troubleshooting the DNS rollout process. There are great – and not so great – DNS providers. The difference between a good DNS rollout and bad…

Downloading Backups From Previous Host Provider

Given the following scenario, you’ve just launched a new WordPress site by pointing DNS to the new server and you need to grab a backup file from the old web server. What do you do? There are many potential solutions, such as: Revert DNS Modify the local HOSTS file so that you can reach…