Let's Encrypt

Thanks to Let’s Encrypt HTTPS has become the standard for the entire internet. This project made it possible for any site administrator to get a free SSL certificate in just a few commands. But other players have appeared on the market, offering more convenience, integrations, and flexibility.

If you want to try something besides Let’s Encrypt — below is an overview of the most reliable and popular alternatives.

1. ZeroSSL — same automation, but with a friendly interface

ZeroSSL (Austria) — the main competitor to Let’s Encrypt. It is fully compatible with the same ACME protocol, but emphasizes convenience.

Introduction

Let’s Encrypt is the standard for obtaining free TLS certificates. Most often certificates are issued via the HTTP-01 method, which requires a reachable web server on port 80. However, for internal services or wildcard certificates (for example, *.example.com) it is more convenient to use DNS-01, which verifies domain ownership via TXT records in DNS and does not require open ports.

This article covers:

• Issuing certificates via the Cloudflare API,
• Issuing certificates via Amazon Route 53 (AWS),
• Integration with web servers Nginx, HAProxy and Traefik,
• Automation of certificate renewal.

Note: Instructions are relevant for Certbot 2.x, acme.sh 3.x, Nginx 1.18+, HAProxy 2.4+, Traefik 2.x on Linux (Ubuntu/Debian). For other OSes or tool versions adjustments may be required.

Read more

Moving a website to a new server or restoring it after a failure can sound like a scary task, especially if you’re new to web development or administration. But don’t panic. With the right approach and a step-by-step plan you can handle it without stress. Below is a breakdown of the whole process: from backup to functionality checks, including ISPmanager and FreePanel panels and local testing via hosts without changing public DNS.

Introduction

In a world where setting up a web server often requires studying complex configuration files, Caddy offers a radically different approach. It is a modern, multifunctional web server, reverse proxy, and certificate authority in one package.

Caddy was created with a single goal: to provide maximum simplicity. If you are tired of the redundancy of Nginx or Apache, then Caddy is what you’re looking for. Its main “killer feature” is fully automatic SSL certificate management, making it an indispensable tool for developers.

Introduction to Hestia Control Panel

If you’re looking for a powerful, modern, and completely free control panel for your VPS or dedicated server, Hestia Control Panel (HestiaCP) is one of the best options available. HestiaCP is a fork of the once-popular but now inactive VestaCP and is actively developed by the community. It offers an excellent feature set focused on performance and security. It’s a perfect fit for individual developers, freelancers, small businesses, and anyone who wants full control over their server without extra costs.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to easily install n8n, a powerful workflow automation tool, on your server with FastPanel using Docker Compose. FastPanel is great for managing web servers, and Docker Compose simplifies the deployment of complex applications like n8n with its dependencies (PostgreSQL and Redis).

What You’ll Need

• Your server with FastPanel installed.
• A domain or subdomain you’ll use to access n8n (e.g., n8n.yourdomain.com).
• Basic knowledge of SSH and command line.

Step 1: Prepare the Server

Connect to your server via SSH and create a directory:

Hi friends! Today, we’re diving into the world of automation and deploying n8n — a powerful workflow automation tool. We’ll install it in Docker, and use HAProxy as a reliable reverse proxy to expose it to the internet.

This guide is created especially for beginners. We’ll go step by step, explaining every command so you not only do it, but also understand how everything works.

Why do we even need HAProxy?

You could just expose n8n’s ports to the internet, right? Yes, but that’s unsafe and inconvenient. HAProxy acts as both a guard and a dispatcher: