Studies and guides
Our publications bring together the studies we carry out and publish in full, figures, method and source included, and practical guides for choosing a service or getting a website back on its feet.
A fast PostgreSQL database is one whose frequently read data fits in memory. All the sizing follows from that: how big the database is, how much of it is really in use, how many connections it serves, then the disk and its headroom. This guide gives the method, starting settings for 4, 8 and 16 GB of memory, and the queries that measure an existing database.
Read the guideIt all starts with one question: what are those users doing? A thousand people logged into an app do not make a thousand requests per second, and a page served from cache costs a hundred times less than a page built on every visit. This guide turns users into requests, requests into the CPU and memory your VPS needs, then shows how to check it all with a load test.
Read the guide"Running AI" covers two needs that call for very different servers. An app that calls a model through an API is sized like any web application; a model running on the server itself is sized by its memory first. This guide separates the two cases, gives the footprint of common models and shows how to calculate it.
Read the guideOn shared hosting, hundreds of sites share one server, its settings and its limits. On a VPS, the server is yours, with its own resources and root access. The useful question is when shared hosting stops being enough. This guide sets out the difference point by point, the signs that settle it, and how to switch without downtime.
Read the guideRAM is what most often decides the size of a VPS. It runs out first, and when it does, the server does not slow down gracefully: it kills processes. This guide gives the sizing rule, what each part of an application actually uses, typical profiles, and how to measure a server that is already running.
Read the guideA quote that goes missing, an invoice found in the junk folder: when your emails keep going to spam, the reason is written in the headers of the message that arrived. Three records on your domain, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, prove to mailbox providers that your mail really comes from you. This guide sets them up in order.
Read the guideAn update to WordPress, a plugin, the theme or PHP, and the site is no longer itself: layout in pieces, a white screen, a form that stopped working. Rolling back is done component by component, keeping everything the site has received since, orders and messages included. Here are the steps, in order.
Read the guideYour site shows a single line: "Error establishing a database connection". WordPress could not open the database that holds your pages, settings and accounts. Your content is usually intact: this guide shows how to find which of the four possible causes is at play, and how to fix it.
Read the guideWhere your site should be, there is a blank white page or a single line: "There has been a critical error on this website." Either way, PHP has written a precise message somewhere, naming the file at fault. This guide shows where to read it, how to interpret it, and which fix goes with each message.
Read the guideWhere your website used to be, a page now says the account has been suspended. A suspension usually comes down to one of four causes, and each is resolved differently: a hacked site, resource usage over the limits, an unpaid invoice, or a complaint received by the host. Here is how to tell which one, and the steps to get the site back online.
Read the guideVisitors hit a red "Dangerous site" screen in Chrome before reaching your website, or Google writes "This site may be hacked" under your search result. The warning comes from the Google Safe Browsing list, and it is lifted through a set process: find out what Google detected, clean it up, then request a review.
Read the guideVisitors land on a lottery page, a pill shop or a fake tech support screen, yet the site looks fine when you open it. That is the mark of an injected redirect, usually a conditional one. This guide shows how to trigger it on purpose, locate it in the files or the database, and shut the door it came through.
Read the guideA nonprofit looking for a free website mostly finds online builders: the tool is free, the work is not. Here are fifteen services, ordered by how much each one takes off your hands, with what every provider publishes about its own free offer.
Read the guideAn llms.txt is an invitation addressed to AI assistants: a short file at the root of a site, saying who you are and where to look. This reading counts the sites that have put it up, and reads what they tell those same crawlers in the file next door.
Read the studyBefore reading a page, an AI crawler reads a file that says what it may do with it. That file exists on most websites. This survey looks at what it answers, and above all at who wrote it.
Read the studyAlmost every one of these domains publishes an SPF record. This survey looks at the line after it: the policy that tells receiving servers what to do when the check fails.
Read the studyYour WordPress site keeps getting hacked? Simafri takes it over and puts it back online on a base we host, secure and keep updated, month after month.
Read the guideA site cleaned after a hack starts out clean, then gets taken again. This survey looks at what cleaning never changes: the number of suppliers the site depends on.
Read the studyKnowing what AI assistants answer about your company has become a job of its own. Seven AI visibility tools do it. The question here is a technical one: which of them can your own assistant query directly, without going through a dashboard.
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