Hosting
Hosting Exponential: servers, PHP, databases, web servers, Velocity, caching, backups and operations.
143 pages
- Runbook: restore from backup Restoring an Exponential site from a backup during an incident: decide what to restore, maintenance mode, stop Velocity, restore the database with the engine's tool and the files, fix owners, clear caches, regenerate…
- Security review checklist A security review a host runs for an Exponential site before go-live, after an incident and once a quarter: versions, accounts, settings, served files, headers and CSP, request logs, isolation, secrets, backups and the…
- The setup wizard on shared hosting How customers without shell access install Exponential in the browser with the setup wizard, and what the host prepares: code upload, writable directories, the .htaccess file, HTTPS, the database, the maintenance hold…
- Velocity response cache The response cache in Velocity's parent process for hosted sites: what it stores and never stores, the velocity.ini settings and their trade-offs, conditional requests and stale-while-revalidate, 404s and logs, clearing…
- Backup schedules and retention The choices a host makes when it turns Exponential backups into a service (how often, how many generations, where they are kept, what is backed up before a change) and the retention settings inside Exponential that a…
- Changing a customer site's database engine How a host moves a customer site from one of the six supported databases to another (for example from SQLite 3 to PostgreSQL when a site outgrows one machine): when it is worth it, the engine-neutral .dba transfer…
- Containers: Docker and Podman Running Exponential in Docker or Podman containers: what the sources say (tier 2, Velocity's published images), what goes on a persistent volume, the one-writer rule for SQLite, an entry point that installs once and…
- Customer offboarding checklist What a host does when a customer leaves or moves their Exponential site elsewhere: a complete handover export, credentials, DNS, the final backup, deletion of data according to contract and law, and closing the records.
- HTTP cache headers What browsers, proxies and CDNs may keep from an Exponential site: the default no-cache page headers, cacheable headers for anonymous visitors only, static file lifetimes under Velocity and Apache, and the role-aware…
- LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed What the Exponential sources say about LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed hosting: the shipped Apache rules, the LSAPI SAPI, open_basedir, what to test before selling a plan, and where Velocity fits.
- Marketing Exponential hosting How a host markets Exponential hosting truthfully: the facts you can use with their sources, claims you must not make, naming rules, the content of a landing page, and a launch checklist.
- Restricting the administration How a host keeps the Exponential administration of each customer site out of reach of everyone else: its own host name, network limits in Apache, nginx or in front of Velocity, request-shield's browser check…
- Runbook: compromised site What a host does when an Exponential site may have been compromised: contain without destroying evidence, check the audit trail and its hash chain, the security log and changed files, rotate credentials and sessions…
- Site packages for hosts What an Exponential installation puts on a new site: the site packages offered by the package index (sevenx_multisite and the others, with or without demo content), where packages come from (remote index, local…
- Webmin Webmin is not mentioned in the Exponential sources and is not placed in a tier. This page says so, explains why the installation book's own instructions for Apache, nginx, PHP-FPM, cron and certificates are the…
- Automating provisioning A provisioning pipeline for new Exponential customer sites, step by step: system user and isolation, database, code from Git or Composer, exp:install with secrets from the environment, serving the site, cron, password…
- Database backups per engine The backup, check and restore commands for each database Exponential supports, in the official order (SQLite 3, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, Oracle, MySQL), with the traps of each engine and a portable schema dump for…
- First sign-in and default passwords What administrator password each way of installing Exponential leaves behind, how a host hands the first sign-in to a customer without a known or shared password, what to remove after provisioning, how to find an old…
- Kubernetes What the sources say about running Exponential on Kubernetes (tier 3, expected to work) and what several replicas require from the database, the shared file storage, sessions, cron, proxies and code deploys, written as…
- Microsoft IIS What the Exponential sources say about Windows hosting with Microsoft IIS and FastCGI PHP: the status, what the kernel detects, what Windows lacks, the routing to reproduce in web.config, and the tests to run before…
Documentation license
This documentation is free documentation, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.
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