Will using `nice -20` on nginx and php-fpm make my WordPress site go faster?

The nice command in Unix and Linux systems is used to alter the scheduling priority of processes. A lower nice value means higher priority. However, using nice -20 to set the highest priority for your PHP-FPM and Nginx processes isn’t likely to have a significant impact on your WordPress site’s speed unless your server is […]

How to build your Docker image using the same Dockerfile regardless of the host architecture

Problem If you are now using docker on a Mac M1 (arm64 platform), you don’t want to use amd64 as the architecture for your Linux Images. You could have 2 lines on your Dockerfile and comment each one depending on where you’re building the image Dockerfile # Building on Apple Silicon host FROM –platform=linux/arm64 ubuntu:20.04 […]

How to enable source highlighting when doing `less mycodefile.ext`

How to enable source highlighting when doing less mycodefile.ext Install source-highlight sudo apt install source-highlight Configure it on your .bash_profile lessWithSourceHighlightSetup() { # location of the script may vary src_hilite_pipe_script=`dpkg -L libsource-highlight-common | grep lesspipe` export LESSOPEN=”| ${src_hilite_pipe_script} %s” export LESS=’ -R ‘ } lessWithSourceHighlightSetup Use it on any code file less -N /path/to/mycode.ext view […]

[linux/ubuntu] How to suppress useless mod_openssl/lighttpd error messages from appearing in /var/log/syslog

Sometimes you have a bunch of useless errors creating unnecessary disk I/O on your server, disk I/O that should be used towards serving your user’s requests efficiently. In this case a site running on lighttpd keeps logging several times per second the following message, creating too much noise and making it hard to see meaningful […]

nginx server configuration for a wordpress instance served from a URL’s subdirectory

You want to serve a wordpress instance on a website’s domain url but not at the path’s root, you want it under a sub-directory, for example “blog”, the same as this blog: https://www.gubatron.com/blog Here’s how my NGINX’s server block for ‘www.gubatron.com’ looks like at the moment (https/ssl hasn’t been configured yet) [pastacode lang=”javascript” path_id=”fc6f967d7689931c81e9e9691b714f29″ file=”” […]

[bash scripting] `contains_item` bash function. Check if an item is in an array

Fix high CPU usage by WordPress and MySQL

Today one of our wordpress sites had very high server load and it was being caused by MySQL So I went to the mysql console, and looked up the process list: So this guy is appearing a lot SELECT option_name, option_value FROM wp_options WHERE autoload = ‘yes’; Let’s see how it’s behaving with explain explain […]

HOW TO ENABLE PHP FPM LOG OUTPUT

This one had me for the longest time. If you happen to be running a web server with php-fpm, sometimes you will run across an HTTP 500 error and all you will get will be a blank screen. You will look at your server’s error log, your vhost error’s log and you will see nothing. […]

Upgrading your wordpress blog to PHP 7.0 on Ubuntu Xenial

If you’re about to upgrade your Ubuntu server to 16.04 (Xenial) you might want to take advantage of the new PHP 7.0 which is as fast or more than Facebook’s HHVM, or perhaps during the upgrade process a few things may have broken and perhaps that’s why you’re here Make sure the following packages are […]

[SYSADMIN] Serve your WordPress cached pages directly with lighttpd and not PHP

Optimizing Your WordPress Cache Loads in Lighttpd. If you don’t configure your wordpress virtual host properly in lighttpd, your wordpress cache will still make use of PHP. Wouldn’t it be nice if all those cached requests were served directy from the webserver as the static files that they are, bypassing the CPU/memory load PHP can […]