Web Servers

mod_rewrite is one of Apache’s most powerful and most confusing modules. The syntax is dense, the flags are cryptic, and debugging is painful. But it’s also everywhere — almost every HTTPS redirect, URL rewrite, and routing rule in Apache uses it. I’ve spent a lot of time staring at mod_rewrite configs. Here’s what I actually […]

I spent a while ignoring OCSP stapling because it felt like an advanced optimization that wasn’t worth the effort. Then I actually measured the TLS handshake times on a server without it and realized visitors were waiting for an extra round-trip to a CA’s OCSP server on every new connection. That changes the calculus. What

I’ve configured Nginx as a reverse proxy dozens of times, and while the basic setup is always similar, the details — SSL termination, certificate management, header forwarding, timeout settings — are where things get interesting. This is how I approach it, with the reasoning behind each decision. What “SSL Termination at the Proxy” Means The

Apache’s approach to SSL is fundamentally different from Nginx. Where Nginx has SSL baked in, Apache uses a module system — mod_ssl — that needs to be explicitly enabled. The configuration syntax is also more verbose. That’s not necessarily bad; Apache’s granular configuration options can be very useful. But it means more places where things

IIS has the most friction of any common web server when it comes to SSL certificate management. Not because it’s technically harder, but because the workflow is different from Linux-based servers and the GUI-heavy approach obscures what’s actually happening. I’ve set up SSL on IIS for clients a number of times, and each time I

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is how PHP runs behind Nginx. The two don’t talk to each other directly — Nginx hands PHP requests to PHP-FPM via FastCGI, PHP-FPM processes them, and sends responses back. Getting this configuration right affects both performance and stability. I’ve set this up dozens of times. Here’s what I’ve learned about

A 504 Gateway Timeout means the proxy or gateway did not get a response from the upstream fast enough. In practical terms, a frontend server such as Nginx waited for Apache, PHP-FPM, Gunicorn, Node.js, or some internal API, and the answer took longer than the configured limit. I treat 504 as a timing problem with

A 503 Service Unavailable response tells me the server is reachable, but it cannot handle the request right now. That wording matters. Unlike a DNS failure or connection refusal, the system is still present enough to answer. It is simply overloaded, deliberately unavailable, or temporarily unable to hand work to the component that should process

A 502 Bad Gateway error usually means Nginx was able to accept the client request, but it failed when it tried to talk to the upstream application that should have generated the real response. In practice, that upstream might be PHP-FPM, Apache, Gunicorn, uWSGI, Node.js, a local API on another port, or even another reverse

Redirects look simple until they are not. I have seen one misplaced 301 break a migration plan for days because browsers cached it so aggressively that testers kept insisting the “old bug” was still there after the config had already changed. I have also seen 302 used for a permanent site move, which delayed search