The IT Explorer

What is this series? I’m an independent developer, and I’ve learned countless lessons about servers the hard way over the past few years. This series is my collection of 60 practical guides based on real experience, designed to help you: 📦 Save time: No need to figure it out yourself - just copy my configs 💰 Save money: Avoid the pits I fell into 🚀 Copy-paste ready: Every guide has complete commands and configs Who is this for? ✅ Indie developers who want to deploy beyond Vercel ✅ Develo...

A freshly bought VPS is like an unlocked door with script kiddies knocking from all over the world. This guide walks you through locking that door tight, so your openclaw won’t go running wild. 0. Before We Begin You just bought a VPS, excitedly grabbed the IP and root password, and now what? Most folks just dive right in: installing software and deploying their projects. That’s a dangerous habit. Your VPS has a public IP, meaning anyone in the world can try to connect to it. And with the d...

“My laptop is an M3 Pro with 16GB of RAM—why on earth do I still need a server with just 4 cores and 8GB of RAM?” If you hang out in the r/indiehackers subreddit, you’ll see newbies asking this all the time. In an era dominated by Serverless (like Vercel) and PaaS (like Supabase), spinning up a VPS (Virtual Private Server) almost feels a bit “old-school.” But here’s the reality: indie devs who actually close the loop and build a profitable long-term business always have a few VPS instances ...

VPS Routing Explained: The Complete Guide to CN2, 9929, and BGP When you pick a VPS, the spec sheet isn’t what bites you — the network route is. A high-end server on a rotten route can stutter so badly during evening peak that even SSH feels laggy, while a humble little box on a great route can make your site feel as fast as localhost. This guide walks through the routing knowledge that matters most when you reach an overseas VPS from mainland China — what CN2, 9929, and BGP actually are, how...

Buying a VPS seems like a no-brainer—just pick a plan, pay, and you’re done. But over the past two years, I’ve tried 8 different VPS providers, and I’ve hit way more pitfalls than I’ve saved money. This article documents all the traps I’ve fallen into so you can skip the headache. 1. What to Expect No hearsay: I’m only writing about the pitfalls I’ve personally experienced. Not a spec nerd: I focus on real-world usage, not synthetic benchmark scores. Actionable: Every pitfall comes with a ve...

You just spun up a VPS — but how do you actually tell whether it’s any good? And when a provider promises “CN2 GIA” routing into China, how do you confirm it’s the real deal and not marketing fluff? This guide rounds up the most complete, current collection of VPS benchmark scripts for 2026 — from raw performance and return-route tracing to IP reputation and streaming-unlock checks. If you’re deploying services that need to reach users across borders (China included), this is the toolkit that...

My Real-World Experience with 8 VPS Providers As an independent developer, I have used RackNerd, CloudCone, GreenVPS, ClawCloud, Contabo, ZgoCloud, Sunshine Cloud, and Hostinger for the past two years. This article is a record of my real-world experience, helping you avoid pitfalls. 1. Expectations To help independent developers quickly choose a VPS that suits their needs To record my real-world experiences, not just promotional content To continuously update my experience 2. Planning and T...