From the engineers

Guides, releases and engineering notes

Practical writing about hosting, performance, streaming and networking — the things we learn running the platform day to day.

VPS vs shared hosting: which one do you actually need?

Shared hosting is cheap and hands-off; a VPS is raw control. Here is a plain-English way to decide which fits your project — and when to switch.

A complete walkthrough from a blank VPS to a fast, secure WordPress site — stack choices, hardening, caching and the mistakes that slow people down.

WireGuard is fast, small and auditable. Here is what it actually does, and why running your own endpoint changes the privacy and performance maths.

Region choice is the highest-impact performance decision you make before you write a line of code. Here is how to pick well using measurable data.

Take your files, calendars and documents off someone else’s servers without losing convenience. What to plan for before you install Nextcloud.

Buffering is a chain of bottlenecks. Learn how to find the real cause — upload, transcode, bandwidth or the viewer’s connection — and fix it.

Object storage is how modern apps keep files. Here is what “S3-compatible” means, when to use it, and how to avoid the egress bill trap.

A hosted password manager concentrates enormous risk in one place. Self-hosting Vaultwarden keeps your encrypted vault under your own control.

A CDN puts copies of your static assets closer to visitors. Here is when it dramatically helps, when it does nothing, and how to tell the difference.

Most people have backups and still lose data, because the backup was never restorable. Here is a backup plan that survives real failures.

Docker makes self-hosting hundreds of apps a one-command affair. Here is how to run it well on a VPS without fighting it later.

Speed is a feature users feel and search engines measure. Here is a five-minute audit that finds the bottlenecks that actually matter.

From stream bitrate to auto-DJ and listener stats — a practical look at the moving parts behind an online radio station.