Field notes from keeping LAMP systems healthy.
August 11, 2026
pm.max_children from measured worker memory, timeouts that fail cleanly, slowlogs that name the bottleneck, and a load test that maps your actual ceiling — tuning from numbers, not blog-post folklore.
Read moreJuly 21, 2026
A backup you have never restored is a hope. A monthly drill — restore, verify, boot the app, write it down — catches missing routines, charset mangling, and silent cron failures before the incident does.
Read moreJune 16, 2026
Most LAMP performance problems are a missing cache at one of three layers — opcode, application, HTTP — or a cache someone believes is working and is not. The wins that take hours, not weeks.
Read moreMay 19, 2026
The 8.0 upgrade is one-way, so the checklist matters: the upgrade checker, the vanished query cache, collation strategy, auth-plugin compatibility, and a rehearsal that doubles as a backup test.
Read moreApril 14, 2026
Most PHP 8 migrations are less work than teams fear — but the work hides in predictable places. Loose comparisons, throwing internals, removals, and how to inventory it all before you deploy.
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