Bing stops accepting Sitemap pings, switch to IndexNow instead
Bing (and Yandex) no longer wants to be notified of updates to your website’s XML sitemap file anymore. Send the updated URLs directly with IndexNow API instead.
Webmaster
Changes to how Mozilla Readability extract metadata in Firefox 63
Firefox’s Reading Mode now prefers Dublin Core and Open Graph Protocol metadata when available over other metadata sources.
New browser extension lets you opt-out of Google AMP
A new browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that gives people the choice to opt-out of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in favor of the open web.
Moved to Hetzner VPS: Shorter legal docs as a competitive advantage
Linode required me to agree to updated Terms of Service with not enough time to review them. Hetzner’s full contract was shorter than Linode’s preamble.
First impressions of KeyChest – A TLS certificate expiration tracker
The new cost-free service helps you keep on top of service maintenance by sending you an email notifications before your HTTPS certificates expire.
Keep an eye on your certificates with SSLPing
SSLPing is a service that keeps an eye on the health of your TLS certificates and server security configuration. It’ll email you before your certificates expire.
Always care for old links after moving domain and reorganizing URLs
Create a URL transition-plan and create redirects for old URLs. Take a few minutes to avoid losing traffic when you move domain names or reorganize your URLs.
Linode DNS Manager pitfall: No TXT record normalization
Be wary when entering DNS TXT records in the Linode DNS Manager. The web interface doesn’t properly normalize user input.
How to set up ClamAV to periodically scan for badware on Fedora Linux
All the steps needed for running periodic malware scans on your Fedora installation. Recommended for Fedora Server setups!
Restore from a Linode Backup
Learn how to restore your Linode servers from backup using the Linode Manager.
New Brotli compression filter module now in Apache Web Server
Learn how to enable the new Brotli compression module alongside Gzip compression in the Apache HTTPD server.
How to set up PHP-GeoIP with automatic database updates
Instructions for setting up auto-updates for the GeoIP location databases, and set up the PHP-GeoIP extension in Fedora/Ubuntu Linux.
IP addresses as an auth factor in the era of device roaming and IPv6
Stop relying on IP addresses not changing in an IPv6-enabled world were devices randomly change their address at least once a day.
Image quality degradation as a hotlink deterrent
You can deter image hotlinking and reduce the associated bandwidth costs by reducing the image quality instead of outright blocking it.
Attack of the AppleNewsBot
A bug in the Apple News crawler caused it to get stuck in a loop sending 100+ requests/second to websites with HTTPS certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt.
Store WordPress commenter data in localStorage rather than cookies
How to move commenter data from cookies to localStorage. Reduces the amount of personal data needlessly transmitted with every HTTP request to your web servers.
Internet Archive plugin for WordPress
A WordPress plugin for automatically archiving everything you publish and external links in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Help preserve your work.
Robot discrimination: No robots allowed, except Googlebot
A survey shows how many websites discriminate against and block all search engines and spiders except GoogleBot in their /robots.txt files.