Step-by-step guides and fixes for server administrators: cPanel, DirectAdmin, Windows Server, email, DNS, security and more. Free to read, tested on real servers. Press / to search.
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DirectAdmin ModSecurity: Secure OWASP CRS Setup
How to turn on ModSecurity 3 through CustomBuild with the OWASP Core Rule Set or the Comodo ruleset, where the rules and audit log live, and how to write per-domain exclusions so one false positive does not mean disabling the firewall for everyone.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin mail delivery problems: forwarder loops, send-limit counting and outbound MX lookups
Three DirectAdmin mail faults that surface as bounces or silent non-delivery, explained through Exim's mainlog, the per-user send-limit files, the forwarder loop protection added in 1.693 and the FORCED_MX_DNS_CHECK behaviour from 1.703.
September 29, 2026
Mitigating Copy Fail, Dirty Frag and the DirectAdmin 1.711 TLS privilege escalation
Applying the kernel-side mitigations for the 2026 Copy Fail, Dirty Frag and Fragnesia local privilege escalations on DirectAdmin servers, updating to 1.711 for the TLS system fix, and verifying that each mitigation is actually in force.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin license errors and update failures: da update, IP/hostname mismatches
Working through the license and update problems a DirectAdmin server can hit, from an expired or IP-bound licence to a da update that cannot reach the download servers, with the commands and log lines that identify each one.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin External Mail: Google Workspace and M365 Without Problems
How to point a DirectAdmin-hosted domain's mail at Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 so that both inbound delivery and mail sent from the website's PHP land in the external mailbox, and how the forced MX DNS check introduced in 1.703 changes the behaviour.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin da CLI: update, build, config-set and More
A practical reference for DirectAdmin's da command-line tool, covering panel updates and release channels, the CustomBuild wrapper, reading and changing directadmin.conf safely, user administration from the shell, and what changed in recent releases.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin Roundcube Branding: Custom Webmail URL
Pointing webmail.example.com and the panel's webmail link at Roundcube 1.7 on DirectAdmin, keeping custom config and logos safe from CustomBuild rebuilds, and using the one-click webmail login added in 1.688.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin DOCROOT Token Change 1.710: Fix Broken Templates
What DirectAdmin 1.710 changed in the web-server template tokens and subdomain aliasing, how to find custom templates that still use SDOCROOT or REALDOCROOT, and how to bring them in line without losing the customisations they carry.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin Certificate Not Renewing: Fix Failed Renewals
A diagnostic path for DirectAdmin domains whose certificates stop renewing under the ACME TLS system, from the Provisioning history page added in 1.710 through lego's error messages to the failure counter that silently disables a domain.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin Backups S3: Reliable Admin, Reseller and User Backups
How DirectAdmin's three backup levels differ, how to schedule admin backups to a remote FTP or S3 target, where the archives live, and how to restore a single account or a whole server from them without overwriting the wrong data.
September 29, 2026
DirectAdmin 503 PHP-FPM Errors: Log Checks
Diagnosing 503 errors from PHP-FPM sites on DirectAdmin now that pool logs go to the systemd journal, covering exhausted workers, socket permission faults, per-user pool settings and the CustomBuild override that makes fixes survive rebuilds.
September 29, 2026
MariaDB Slow Queries on 11/12: Diagnosis Steps
A working method for finding and fixing the queries that make a shared MariaDB server slow, using the slow query log with sensible thresholds, EXPLAIN and ANALYZE, the optimizer trace for the hard cases, and the optimizer hints introduced in 12.x to force a plan.
September 29, 2026