Introduction
Hey WordPress Warriors! February is on the books, and here’s a rundown of some of the behind-the-scenes work that went on. This includes new releases, 7 new knowledge base articles, 28 knowledge base updates, and an update on the status of backups V1.
Table of Contents
New Releases
GridPane Nginoil
Nginoil is an optional feature that runs as a part of the nginx.service when it starts up. Unlike a regular start-up that runs a standard nginx -t, Nginoil has built-in functionality to detect where Nginx syntax errors are originating from and implement a fix that allows Nginx to successfully boot up. It can be activated via GP-CLI, or there’s also a toggle in the Server Customizer > Nginx tab, so you can easily activate/deactivate this directly inside your GridPane dashboard.
GridPane Nginoil – Automatically Fix Nginx Syntax Errors
Along with Nginoil came some updates to our gp nginx -t and gp nginx reload commands. Details are also in the above article.
GridPane API
Support for PHP 8.0 in OAuth API was also introduced.
PeakFreq
We’re launching our internal pilot program for PeakFreq, which is our take on “managed WordPress meets the fastest infrastructure on the planet.” Over the past 18 months, we’ve tested everything under the sun as relates to “high frequency” and we’ve landed on a handful of configurations that we feel sufficiently move the needle in performance – particularly for any kind of high concurrency WooCommerce and LMS type workloads.
The hyper short version: you need to have production-ready Woo/LMS/complex workloads that need rocket fuel, and you want us to handle everything. You can learn more about this here in the Facebook group.
We’ll also publish additional information on this to the blog in the near future.
Changelog
The changelog has been updated and can be viewed over on our roadmap here:
https://roadmap.gridpane.com/f/changelog/
Notable Fixes/Improvements/Changes
- Backups V1 has been removed from the GridPane dashboard
- Added a guard so files aren’t copied over if free space falls to a certain point, sends notification instead
- Force delete option added for domains that get stuck in pending state
- GPOLS generating vhosts for temporary sites during transfers, causing OLS syntax errors when temporary sites are cleaned up
Newly Published Knowledge Base Articles
We published 7 new knowledge base articles in February. Some of these may be of particular interest to many of you.
OpenLiteSpeed (OLS) Caching and the LiteSpeed Cache Plugin (LSCache)
We published our long-awaited article on activating page and object caching on OpenLiteSpeed and using the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. Links to the official documentation for further information have been added throughout the article alongside our breakdown.
This article is intended as a getting started guide rather than an in-depth look at every one of the plugin’s extensive list of features.
OpenLiteSpeed Caching and the LiteSpeed Cache Plugin
How to Reduce Eric Jones Spam (and all the other Contact Form Spam)
Recently, one of my sites started getting relentlessly hammered with “Hey, my name’s Eric and for just a second, imagine this…“, as well as a bunch of other junk that landed straight in my spam folder. It’s a nuisance, and spam is always a constant battle, so I figured I’d set out to solve this (at least until these spammers implement a workaround).
How to Reduce Eric Jones Spam (and all the other Contact Form Spam)
Creating a Blueprint (AKA Boilerplate) WordPress Website to Speed Up Development
Going a step beyond our bundle’s feature, many WordPress professionals use what’s known as a Blueprint website (AKA a Boilerplate site). This is a partially built-out site that you simply clone to your development domain, and that cuts out all the foundational groundwork that you may normally do for each and every project.
This isn’t a feature in itself, but GridPane makes utilizing a Blueprint site in your business extremely easy.
Creating a Blueprint (AKA Boilerplate) WordPress Website to Speed Up Development
Additional Articles
We also published the following:
Knowledge Base Updates
In addition to the 7 new articles above, in February we updated 28 existing articles:
- Using the GridPane 7G Web Application Firewall on Nginx
- WordPress Website Hardening for Nginx and OpenLiteSpeed (OLS)
- How to Setup Smush to Serve WebP Images on Nginx
- Diagnosing Caching Issues
- Do I Leave Secure Debug On?
- V2 Backups Part 1. How Backups Work / Configuration / Purging / Exports and Imports
- How to Create Nginx Redirects (with Examples)
- Exclude a Page from Nginx Server Caching
- Getting to know the command line: Linux CLI basics
- WP Rocket and Rocket-Nginx Caching on GridPane
- Diagnosing 520 Errors
- View your GridPane Site log
- How to add your own custom Nginx headers (or reset existing headers)
- Elasticsearch and ElasticPress
An Introduction to Maldet and ClamAV Malware Scanning - Provision a Hetzner Server using our Custom Server Option
- GridPane V1 Local Backups
- Transitioning from V1 Backups to V2 Backups
- Manage Site Domains and Site Routing (non www vs www)
- Cloning a site to a new URL on a different server
- Cloning a site to a new URL on the same server
- Provisioning an SSL for a domain using Webroot Domain Verification
- Provisioning an SSL for a domain using DNS API Domain verification
- Provisioning an SSL for a domain using DNS API Domain verification by Proxy Challenge
- Provisioning a Wildcard SSL for a domain using DNS API Domain verification
- Provisioning a Wildcard SSL for a domain using DNS API Domain verification by Proxy Challenge
- Restoring a Deleted WordPress Website
- I Have Deleted My Site! What Do I Do??! How to Quickly Restore a Deleted WordPress Website
- Diagnosing and Fixing SSL Certificate Issues
Backups Update
Backups V1 has now been removed from the UI now that we’re 3 months on from their official end of life, and 4 months on from the V2’s release out of beta. They can still be managed directly via CLI on the server (details in the knowledge base), but we highly recommend updating to the new V2 system as soon as possible.
A script that was planned for removing V2 backups older than February 25th, 2021 that were a part of the early beta was slightly delayed – we’ll update the status on that here ASAP. More details on this can be found in this blog post:
Backups Announcements: V2 Pre Feb 25th 2021 Backups, and Goodbye to V1
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