Hosting & cloud
Development, infrastructure, SEO, AI and IT for business — short and to the point.
65 articles
- Hosting & cloud4 min
AWS EC2 vs Lightsail: Which to Choose for a Small Project
Lightsail is a simple AWS VPS with a fixed price for a bundle of resources and traffic, a good fit for websites and small apps; EC2 offers flexibility, auto scaling and full AWS networking but needs setup and attention to billing. You can start on Lightsail and export the server to EC2 later.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
AWS Free Tier: What Is Free and How to Avoid Surprise Bills
The AWS Free Tier covers limited usage of specific services, not your whole account: anything beyond the limits and many supporting resources are billed. The fix is simple — a budget with alerts on day one and a regular look at the Billing console.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
AWS IAM Explained: Users, Groups, Roles and Policies
IAM decides who can do what in your AWS account: identities (users, groups, roles) get permissions through JSON policies, everything is denied unless explicitly allowed, and the root account should be locked away with MFA while daily work uses roles.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Create Your First AWS Lambda Function
Create a function in the Lambda console, turn on a Function URL or connect API Gateway, give the role only the permissions it needs and read logs in CloudWatch. You pay for the number of invocations and for run time weighted by allocated memory.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Host a Static Website on AWS S3 and CloudFront
Site files live in a private S3 bucket, CloudFront serves them over HTTPS through Origin Access Control, ACM issues a free certificate in us-east-1, and your domain's DNS points to CloudFront. You pay only for actual storage, requests and traffic.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
AWS vs Google Cloud vs Azure: How the Big Three Compare
All three clouds cover typical business workloads; AWS wins on catalog breadth, Google Cloud on data, Kubernetes and AI, Azure on Microsoft integration. Choose by your team's skills, the managed services you need and the nearest region.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
Cloud Credits for Startups: AWS, Google Cloud and Azure Programs
The big clouds give startups credits, a prepaid balance for their services with an expiry date; they are easier to get through an accelerator or investor, and the key is to design your architecture as if you were paying from day one.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
Cloud Regions and Availability Zones Explained
A region is a cloud provider's geographic location, and availability zones are isolated data centers inside it. Pick a region by proximity to users, price and legal requirements, and use several zones so your service survives the failure of one data center.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
Cloud Vendor Lock-In: Risks and How to Stay Portable
Lock-in comes from proprietary services, egress fees and closed data formats; you do not need to avoid it entirely, but you should choose deliberately where you get locked in and keep a working exit path.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Cloudflare Proxied vs DNS-Only: When to Use the Orange Cloud
Proxy (orange cloud) your website's HTTP traffic to hide the server IP and get caching, WAF and DDoS protection; keep mail, SSH, databases and other non-HTTP services DNS-only, and set the SSL mode to Full (strict).
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
Cloudflare R2 vs AWS S3: Storage Costs and Egress Fees
The key difference is that R2 charges nothing for egress, while S3 bills every gigabyte served to the internet. R2 wins for files users download often; S3 wins for data processed inside AWS or kept in low-cost archive tiers.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Put Your Website Behind Cloudflare Step by Step
Add the domain to Cloudflare, check the imported DNS records, switch nameservers at your registrar and use the Full (strict) SSL mode to get CDN and protection without breaking anything. Most outages come from Flexible SSL, missing DNS records and DNSSEC left enabled.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Deploy a Docker Container to Google Cloud Run
Build an image that listens on the port from the PORT variable, push it to Artifact Registry and run gcloud run deploy; Cloud Run starts the containers, gives you an HTTPS URL and scales from zero, and you pay mainly for the time spent handling requests.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Deploy a Next.js Site to Vercel with a Custom Domain
Push the project to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket, import the repository into Vercel, add environment variables and attach your domain under Settings → Domains. From then on, every push to the main branch updates the live site automatically.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Deploy a Web App to Azure App Service
Create an App Service plan (it sets region, OS and pricing tier), add a web app with the right runtime, deploy via GitHub Actions or zip deploy, keep secrets in app settings, and release through a staging slot and swap for zero downtime.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
Why DNS Changes Take Time: Propagation and TTL
Resolvers cache DNS answers for the length of the TTL, so after you change a record some users keep seeing the old value until their cache expires; lowering the TTL in advance makes a planned switch fast.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
DNS Records Explained: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS
DNS records tell the internet where to send requests for your domain: A and AAAA point to a server IP, CNAME points to another name, MX points to a mail server, TXT holds verifications and email policies, and NS defines who manages the zone.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is DNSSEC and Should You Enable It
DNSSEC adds digital signatures to DNS records so a resolver can verify the answer was not tampered with; enable it if your DNS provider and registrar support it without manual hassle, but handle the DS record carefully when changing providers.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Happens When a Domain Expires and How Not to Lose It
An expired domain does not disappear at once: it goes through a grace period, then a costlier redemption period, and only then is released for anyone to register; the site and email stop working early, so auto-renew and a current contact email are the best protection.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
Edge Functions vs Serverless Functions: What to Use When
Edge functions run close to the user and suit lightweight logic that does not hit a distant database; regional serverless functions run next to your data and suit business logic, database queries and longer operations.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Common SSL Errors and How to Fix Them
Nearly every SSL problem comes down to five causes: the certificate expired, does not cover the site name, is served without its intermediate chain, the page loads resources over HTTP or HTTP and HTTPS redirect to each other in a loop.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Get a Free SSL Certificate with Let's Encrypt
Click the Let's Encrypt button in your hosting panel or run certbot on your server, then confirm auto-renewal is enabled, run certbot renew --dry-run and add external expiry monitoring.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 vs Yandex 360 for Business Email
Google Workspace is the easiest start for a small team, Microsoft 365 is stronger on management and security and fits if you work in Office, and Yandex 360 suits CIS-focused teams; whichever you pick, keep your domain and DNS under your own control so you can move later.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
Hosting in Uzbekistan or Abroad: Speed, Law and Price
If your users are in Uzbekistan and you store their personal data, the database holding it must sit on servers inside the country, and local hosting usually gives lower latency too. Foreign clouds win on service range and global reach, so a hybrid setup is often the sensible choice.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How Anycast Routing Works in CDNs and DNS
With anycast, the same IP prefix is announced via BGP from many data centers, so the internet's routing delivers each user's packets to the network-closest point of presence, spreading load and attacks across all of them.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
How DNS Works: From Typing a URL to Loading a Site
DNS is the internet's distributed directory: a resolver asks a root server, then the zone's server, then the domain's authoritative server, gets the IP address and caches the answer for the TTL.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Business
A good domain is short, spelled the way it sounds, uses a zone your customers trust, does not infringe anyone's trademark and is registered to your company.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Choose a Hosting Provider: A Practical Checklist
Choose a provider not by price but by five things: where the servers are, whether resources are described honestly, how it actually performed recently, how fast support answers, and whether you can restore your data and leave without losses.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Choose VPS Specs: CPU, RAM, Disk and Bandwidth
Start with a modest plan that has comfortable RAM headroom and NVMe storage, watch real load for a week, and then increase only the resource that actually hits its limit.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Connect a Domain to Your Hosting or Server
Either switch the domain's nameservers to your host and manage DNS there, or keep DNS where it is and add an A record with the server IP plus a CNAME for www, then verify with dig.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Estimate Cloud Hosting Costs Before You Launch
Do not price a server — price every component of the system in the units the provider bills: hours, gigabytes, requests. Enter them into the official calculator, include traffic, storage and backups, and add a buffer for growth and unknowns.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Register a .uz Domain: Requirements and Steps
A .uz domain is registered only through an accredited registrar: check the name is free, submit an application with accurate owner details, point it to working DNS servers, pay, and then renew on time.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Transfer a Domain to Another Registrar Safely
First make sure your DNS does not depend on the old registrar, then unlock the domain, get the auth code and start the transfer well before expiry, not a few days before.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Explained with Real Examples
IaaS gives you virtual hardware that you configure yourself, PaaS gives you a ready platform where you just deploy code, and SaaS gives you finished software you use in a browser.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
Managed vs Unmanaged Hosting: Who Takes Care of the Server
With managed hosting the provider handles server updates, backups, security and monitoring; with unmanaged hosting you do it yourself, so the choice depends on whether someone on your team can and will administer the server.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Migrate Business Email to a New Provider Without Losing Mail
Inventory mailboxes and aliases, recreate them at the new provider, copy old mail ahead of time, lower TTL and switch MX at a quiet hour, then keep the old mailboxes open a few more days and sync again so no message is lost.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Move a Website to New Hosting Without Downtime
Lower DNS TTL in advance, build a full copy of the site on the new server, test it through your hosts file, run a final data sync and only then switch DNS, keeping the old server ready for rollback.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Multi-Region Hosting: Building a Site That Survives Outages
Multi-region hosting means a running copy of your app in another region plus automatic traffic failover; start with active-passive and move to active-active only when downtime costs more than double infrastructure and harder data handling.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Object Storage Classes and Lifecycle Rules to Cut Storage Costs
Move rarely read data to cheaper storage classes with lifecycle rules, but account for retrieval fees and minimum storage durations, and always add rules that delete old versions and incomplete multipart uploads.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud: What Is the Difference
A public cloud is shared provider infrastructure you pay for by usage, a private cloud is dedicated to one company, and a hybrid cloud connects the two so each workload runs where it fits best.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Set Up a Public Status Page for Your Website or Service
A status page is a separately hosted page that shows the health of each part of your service and posts incident updates, so users check it instead of flooding support during an outage.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Reduce Cloud Costs: Practical Optimization Tips
First make spending visible with tags, then remove idle resources, size instances to real load, move steady load to reserved capacity and interruptible work to spot, and set lifecycle rules for storage.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is a PTR Record (Reverse DNS) and When You Need One
A PTR record maps an IP address back to a hostname; you need one mainly when a server sends email, and it is set by whoever owns the IP — your VPS or cloud provider — not at your domain registrar.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
Direct File Uploads to Object Storage with Presigned URLs
Your server hands the browser a short-lived signed link and the file goes straight to storage, bypassing the backend; size and type limits live in the signature (best via presigned POST), and CORS allows uploads only from your domain.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud3 min
Serverless Cold Starts: Why They Happen and How to Reduce Them
A cold start is the delay of creating a new function instance: loading code, starting the runtime and running init; reduce it with lighter runtimes, small bundles, lazy init, provisioned concurrency and edge runtimes.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated Server: Which Hosting Do You Need
Shared hosting suits simple sites, a VPS suits growing projects and apps that need their own software and steady resources, and a dedicated server suits heavy workloads and strict isolation requirements.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Set Up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for Your Domain
SPF lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain, DKIM signs every message with a key, and DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks. All three are DNS records, and you verify them by reading the headers of a real message.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Uptime and SLA Mean: 99.9% vs 99.99% in Practice
99.9% uptime allows up to 43 minutes of downtime a month, 99.99% about 4 minutes. An SLA promises that level, but when it is broken you usually get a credit on your next bill, not compensation for your losses.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare Pages: Which to Choose
Vercel is the easiest home for Next.js with server features, Netlify is convenient for static sites and Astro, and Cloudflare is usually cheapest at high traffic because it does not charge for static bandwidth. Your framework and traffic profile make the final call.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
VPS Snapshots vs Backups: What Is the Difference
A snapshot is a fast copy of the whole disk kept inside the same provider, great for rolling back a bad update; a backup is an independent copy of files and databases stored elsewhere that survives losing the server, the account or the provider. You need both.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Monitor Website Uptime and Get Downtime Alerts
Use an external uptime service that checks your site from several regions every 1–5 minutes, alerts Telegram or email after 2–3 failed checks in a row, and hosts a public status page.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is a Domain Name: Zones, Registrars and Ownership
A domain name is a human-friendly site address that you lease from a registry through a registrar; register it to your own company, because legally it belongs to whoever is listed as the owner.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is a CDN and How It Speeds Up Your Website
A CDN is a network of servers around the world that keep copies of your site's files and serve them from the point closest to each visitor, so pages load faster and your main server does less work; the gain is largest for static files and audiences far from the server.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
What Is Cloudflare and What It Does for Your Site
Cloudflare is a network that sits between visitors and your server: it runs your DNS, caches static files, provides SSL and filters out part of the attacks. The basics are free, but after connecting you need to configure SSL and your server correctly.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is Object Storage and How It Differs from a File System
Object storage keeps files as separate objects with a key and metadata inside buckets and serves them over an HTTP API, usually S3-compatible; it scales almost without limit and is independent of any server, so user uploads, media and backups belong there rather than on the disk.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is Serverless Computing: Pros, Cons and Use Cases
Serverless is a model where you upload function code and the cloud runs it on events, scales it and bills you for actual invocations; it suits uneven traffic and background jobs, but not long-running processes or persistent connections.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
What Is an SSL Certificate: DV, OV and EV Types
An SSL certificate proves a site belongs to whoever controls the domain and enables HTTPS encryption; DV checks only domain control, OV and EV also verify the organization, and encryption is identical across all three, so most sites need only DV.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
What Is Vercel and How It Differs from Classic Hosting
Vercel is a platform that builds and publishes your frontend and serverless functions on every git push, with no servers to manage. It is great for sites and web apps on Next.js and similar frameworks, and a poor fit for long-running jobs and heavy backends.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is a VPC: Subnets, Security Groups and Gateways Explained
A VPC is your own isolated network inside a cloud: you split it into public and private subnets, filter traffic with security groups and route it through internet and NAT gateways, so the database never faces the internet.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
What Is a VPS and When a Business Needs One
A VPS is a virtual server with guaranteed resources and full access, running inside a shared physical machine; you need one when a project requires its own software, steady speed and freedom to configure.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
What Is Web Hosting and How Does It Work
Web hosting is renting space and computing resources on a server that is always online: it stores your website's files and delivers them to every visitor.
Basics - Hosting & cloud3 min
Why a Business Needs Email on Its Own Domain
Email on your own domain looks more credible, lands in spam less often thanks to SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and belongs to the company rather than the employee. When someone leaves, you keep their correspondence and the address clients write to.
Basics - Hosting & cloud4 min
Wildcard vs Multi-Domain SSL: When You Need Each
A wildcard *.example.com covers any single-level subdomain but not the bare domain or nested names; a multi-domain SAN certificate covers an explicit list of names, even across domains. You can combine them, and the choice depends on how often new names appear and where the key lives.
Advanced - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Choose Hosting for a WordPress Site
WordPress hosting should support current PHP and MySQL or MariaDB versions, offer page and object caching, a staging copy and automatic off-server backups. Managed WordPress saves maintenance time, while regular hosting or a VPS gives more control.
Practice - Hosting & cloud4 min
How to Set Up Yandex 360 Mail on Your Own Domain
Add and verify your domain in the Yandex 360 admin panel, create MX (mx.yandex.net), SPF, DKIM and DMARC records wherever your DNS is managed, set up staff mailboxes, and mail starts arriving as soon as the records propagate.
Practice
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