Studies and guides
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.
An 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 before reaching you, 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 platforms do it. The question here is a technical one: which of them can your own assistant query directly, without going through a dashboard.
Read the guideSimafri
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