All PeopleAreGeek tools and articles
Everything I’ve built and written, in one place. 147 entries. Sorted by topic because a flat list this long is useless and honestly a little insulting to scroll. It’s all free, no signup, and most of it runs in your browser and never phones home, which matters more to me than it probably should. Jump to a category below. Or just scroll, if that’s your thing.
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Developer Utilities 33
The tabs I never close. Regex, JSON, base64, hashes. And a hub for the errors that make me swear at the screen, which is more of them than I’d like to admit.
Password Generator: Strong Random Passwords and Passphrases, Entropy and Crack TimeStrong random passwords and passphrases generated right in your browser. Set the length and the character set, watch the entropy in bits and the crack time update as you go, and nothing ever leaves the page.
SPF Record Generator: Build a Valid v=spf1 Record with a Live 10-Lookup CounterBuild a valid v=spf1 record from provider presets like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. A live counter keeps you under the 10-lookup limit, and it explains the ~all versus -all choice in plain terms.
DMARC Record Generator: Policy, rua and pct with a Rollout PlanBuild a DMARC record with the right p=, rua and pct values, plus plain guidance on when none, quarantine and reject each make sense, so you can roll the policy out without breaking your own mail.
DKIM Record Generator: Public Key to selector._domainkey TXT, 255-Char ChunkingTurn a public key into the exact selector._domainkey TXT record, with the 255-character chunking handled for you. There’s a lab keygen too, for RSA or Ed25519, when you need a key to test with.
.htpasswd Generator: APR1-MD5 and SHA-512 crypt, with nginx and Apache SnippetsGenerate .htpasswd lines in your browser, APR1-MD5 or SHA-512 crypt, self-tested as it runs so you know the hash is right. It hands you ready nginx and Apache snippets to drop straight in.
MAC Address Lookup: OUI Vendor, I/G and U/L Bits, Virtual Machine PrefixesPaste any MAC and get the OUI vendor back, plus the I/G and U/L bits spelled out. It flags VMware, Hyper-V and VirtualBox prefixes when they turn up, which saves a second guess on a strange address.
Text Diff Checker: Compare Two Texts, Line or Word Level, Side by SideDrop in two texts and see exactly what changed, at the line or the word level, lined up side by side. Handy for config files, copy revisions and anything where one stray character matters.
Case Converter: UPPER, lower, Title, camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case and MoreConvert text between UPPER, lower, Title, camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case and a few more, with smart splitting at camelCase boundaries so the words come apart where you’d expect.
Number Base Converter: Decimal, Hex, Binary, Octal, Custom Base and Two’s ComplementDecimal, hex, binary and octal all linked live and BigInt-sized, with a custom base from 2 to 36 and a real two’s-complement view for when you’re staring at a signed value in a log.
JSON / CSV Converter: Both Directions with a Real RFC 4180 ParserConvert JSON to CSV and back with a real RFC 4180 parser that handles quoted fields, embedded commas and newlines, so your data lands intact instead of shredded at the first comma.
YAML / JSON Converter: Both Directions, Honest About the Norway ProblemConvert YAML to JSON and back, with honest handling of the Norway problem, leading zeros and anchors, the corners that quietly turn a config into something you didn’t write.
Word and Character Counter: Live Counts with a Platform Limit Fit-CheckLive word, character, sentence and reading-time counts as you type, with a fit-check against platform limits so you know before you paste whether the text will fit.
QR Code Generator: URL, Wi-Fi, Text, Email or Phone, with PNG DownloadMake a QR for a URL, Wi-Fi, text, email or phone, pick the error-correction level, then download a clean PNG. It all runs in your browser, with nothing sent off to a server.
Base64 Encoder and Decoder: Base64URL, Data URI, File and Byte InspectorEncode and decode Base64 without a single byte leaving your tab. It handles Base64URL and the padding edge cases, shows you the raw bytes, reads small files, spits out data URIs, and warns you where people usually trip up.
chmod Calculator: Visual Linux Permissions Tool (Octal, Symbolic, rwx)I can never remember if 644 is the safe one or the dangerous one, so I built this. Click read, write and execute for owner, group and other, and it hands you the octal number, the rwx string, and the command to paste.
Color Converter: HEX, RGB, HSL, Contrast Checker, Palette Builder and CSS TokensFlip a color between HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV and CMYK, then check it actually passes WCAG contrast before you ship it. You can build a palette, keep your colors saved in the browser, and copy them straight out as CSS tokens.
CORS Debugger 2026: Preflight Tester, Header Diagnostic and nginx/Apache/Express Config GeneratorWhen the console floods red and nothing talks to your API, point this at the request. It reads the response headers, tells you what the preflight actually wants, and writes you a config to paste into nginx, Apache or Express.
CORS Policy Generator: Headers + Nginx, Apache, Express, FastAPI, Django ConfigTell it which origins you trust and it writes you a sane CORS policy, either from a preset or tuned by hand. Then it hands you the exact config for whatever you run, fourteen stacks in all, from Nginx and Apache to Express, FastAPI and Django.
Cron Expression Generator: Builder, Explainer, Next Runs and Platform NotesCron syntax is write-once, read-never, so let this build the expression for you. It previews the next few run times, breaks down each field, sorts out five-field versus six-field, and flags the timezone gotcha that bites everyone eventually.
dd Command Generator: Write ISO to USB, Image Disks, Wipe Drivesdd is the one command where a typo eats the wrong disk, so I’d rather generate it than fat-finger it. Build the line to flash an ISO to USB, image a drive, wipe one, or make a test file, with block size, count and the rest dialed in.
Developer Error Fix Hub: EACCES, ENOENT, CORS, 502 and More 2026The eight errors you’ve definitely pasted into a search bar at some point, with fixes that actually work: EACCES, ENOENT, EADDRINUSE, CORS, 502, ModuleNotFoundError, JSON parse failures and npm peer dependency hell.
Developer Tools: Formatters, Encoders, Generators and Debugging UtilitiesEvery developer tool I’ve got, gathered on one page. Formatters, encoders, generators and debugging bits for JSON, XML, YAML, Base64, URLs, JWT, UUID, hashes and more, all in your browser.
find Command Generator: Build Linux find Commands Visuallyfind has a flag for everything and a memorable syntax for nothing. Pick what you’re after by name, type, size or age, choose print, -ls, -delete or -exec, and watch the command build live with every flag explained as you go.
Git Rebase vs Merge: When to Use Which (Visual Workflow Guide 2026)The rebase-or-merge argument, settled with pictures instead of dogma. Five real situations, branch diagrams for before and after, the exact commands to run, and how to dig yourself out when the conflicts pile up.
Hash Generator: MD5, SHA-256, SHA-512, File Checksums and HMACHash text or a file right here, no upload involved. MD5 for legacy checksums, the SHA family, file digests and HMAC, plus a paste box to confirm a download matches the checksum it’s supposed to. It’ll also tell you which of these you shouldn’t trust anymore.
HTTP Status Code Explainer: Meanings, Fixes and Live URL CheckLook up what a status code really means, how browsers treat it, and what it does to your SEO. There’s a reference table to browse, and you can point it at a live URL to watch the whole response path unfold.
IPv4 and IPv6 Converter: Decimal, Hex, Binary, Expanded and PTR FormatsAn IP wears more shapes than you’d think: dotted, integer, hex, binary, the expanded and compressed IPv6 forms, IPv4-mapped addresses, even the reverse-DNS hint. Handy when a config wants one format and your notes have another.
JSON Formatter: Validate, Query, Compare and Inspect JSON LocallyUgly JSON in, readable JSON out. It validates the syntax, lets you query deep into nested values, explore the paths, diff two payloads, and poke at the structure, then copy or download whatever you end up with. All in the browser.
JSON to TypeScript Interface Converter: Infer Types, Optional Fields, Unions & JSON SchemaDrop in a JSON payload and get TypeScript interfaces back, with the nested types inferred for you, arrays narrowed to unions, optional fields marked, readonly if you want it, and a JSON Schema on the side.
JWT Decoder: Inspect Header, Payload, Claims, Expiry and Signature RiskPaste a JWT and read what’s actually inside it, locally, never sent anywhere. Header, payload, the exp/nbf/iat timestamps, issuer and audience, and a clear nudge about signature risk so you don’t trust a token before you’ve checked it.
Maximizing Website Speed with Image Optimization Techniques for 2026How I actually get images fast in 2026: AVIF and WebP with picture fallbacks, responsive srcset, lazy loading done right, prioritizing the LCP image, and the compression tools I lean on.
OG Image Preview Studio: Design 1200×630 Open Graph Cards in Your BrowserMake the little preview image that shows up when someone shares your link. Design a 1200×630 PNG live in the browser, pick from six templates, watch it render on Canvas, and see how it’ll look on Facebook, LinkedIn and the rest.
Python Regex Cheatsheet: 20 Essential Patterns Explained (2026)Twenty Python regex patterns I reach for again and again, each one explained instead of just dumped: email, IPv4 and IPv6, URLs, phone numbers, ISO 8601 dates, UUIDs, splitting CSV, parsing log lines, slugs and more.
Regex Tester: Matches, Named Groups, Replace Preview and Saved PatternsBuild a regex and see it match in real time. It breaks out named groups, previews what your replacement does, lets you save patterns you’ll want again, copies ready snippets, and reminds you where a greedy pattern can blow up.
rsync Command Generator: Build Sync, Backup and SSH Transfer Commandsrsync is brilliant until you forget the trailing slash and copy the wrong thing. Build the command here instead: local copies, backups, SSH push or pull, with archive, compress, delete, dry-run and exclude all toggled the way you mean.
Schema.org Wizard 2026: Product, FAQPage, HowTo, JobPosting, LocalBusiness JSON-LD GeneratorFill in a form, get valid Schema.org JSON-LD out the other end. It covers the eleven rich-result types Google still honors in 2026: Product, Article, FAQPage, HowTo, Recipe, Course, JobPosting and the rest, no hand-editing braces.
sed Command Generator: Build Substitute, Delete and Print Commandssed one-liners are easy to read and a pain to write from scratch. Pick what you want done, swap text, delete lines, print a range, insert content, with line addressing plus the global and ignore-case flags, and copy the command.
SSH Tunnel Command Generator: Local, Remote and Dynamic ForwardingI always mix up which way -L points versus -R, so this draws it out for me. Build local (-L), remote (-R) or dynamic SOCKS (-D) tunnels, add a jump host, an identity file and keepalives, and copy a command that actually forwards the right way.
SSL Certificate Renewal Manager: certbot, acme.sh, lego, Caddy, cert-managerAn expired cert is the kind of outage you only make once. Generate the renewal and auto-renewal commands for whichever ACME client you run, eight of them, from certbot and acme.sh to lego, dehydrated, Caddy, cert-manager and win-acme.
systemd Service File Generator: Create .service and .timer UnitsWriting a unit file by hand means looking up the same directives every time. Fill in ExecStart, Type, User, Restart and your environment, and it hands you a complete .service unit plus the commands to install and enable it.
tar Command Generator: Build Create, Extract and List CommandsNobody remembers tar’s flags, we all just guess and check. Pick the job, create, extract, list or append, choose your compression from gzip, bzip2, xz or zstd, flip a few options, and copy the line that does exactly that.
Timestamp Converter: Unix Time, ISO 8601, Timezones and Batch ConversionStare at a 10-digit number long enough and you still won’t know what time it is. Drop in Unix seconds, milliseconds, micro or nanoseconds, or a date string, and get it back as ISO, UTC, your local time, other timezones, or a whole CSV at once.
URL Encoder and Decoder: Query Parser, Nested Redirects and Clean URL ToolEncode or decode a URL, then break the query string into readable parameters. It flags the tracking junk, unwraps redirects nested inside redirects, and hands you back a clean URL to debug with.
UUID Generator: Create UUID v4 and v7, Validate, Batch Export and InspectUUIDs on demand, right in your browser: v4 when you want pure random and v7 when you want them to sort by time. It validates IDs you paste in, reads off the version and variant bits, exports a batch at once, and explains just how unlikely a collision really is.
XML Formatter: Beautify, Minify, Validate and Inspect XML StructureBeautify or minify XML and confirm it parses. It walks the namespaces, attributes and element paths, catches duplicate IDs, and runs profile checks tuned for sitemaps, feeds, SOAP and SVG.
YAML Validator: Validate Indentation, Duplicate Keys and Config StructureYAML breaks on a stray space and the error message never says where. Validate it here: it checks indentation, catches duplicate keys, sorts out lists, anchors and aliases, previews the JSON equivalent, and lets you explore by path.
Cyber Security 13
WordPress audits, HTTP headers, TLS config, monitoring. Plus an AI helper that reads your findings back in plain English. The whole point is to run these before some bot on the internet does it for you.
Bug Bounty Starter Guide for Sysadmins Coming from IT Ops (2026)If you already run infrastructure, you’re closer to bug bounty than you think. This maps your ops skills onto recon, walks the 2026 toolkit (amass, nuclei, Burp, ffuf), and helps you pick a first program without getting in over your head.
Cyber Audit Suite for WordPress: All-in-One Security Scanner (2026)Point it at a WordPress site and it runs ten checks at once, TLS, security headers, version leaks, xmlrpc, REST user enumeration, DNS and redirects, then rolls them into one posture score so you know what to fix first.
Linux Kernel Hardening: Essential sysctl Checklist for 2026Thirty-two sysctl toggles worth setting, grouped by subsystem (network, kernel, filesystem, process, BPF, modules) and ordered so you do the high-impact ones first. There’s a ready /etc/sysctl drop-in at the end to paste straight in.
NetSecAI: Cyber Audit Findings Interpreter with Chat-Style AI RecommendationsA scan report is just noise until someone tells you what to do about it. Paste audit JSON or scan a URL, and NetSecAI sorts the findings by severity, explains each one in plain English, and writes you the exact snippet to fix it.
Robots.txt AI Crawler Blocker: Stop GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Perplexity & 17 Other AI BotsIf you’d rather the AI bots didn’t help themselves to your content, this writes the robots.txt to keep them out. It covers the crawlers behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Meta AI, Apple Intelligence and Common Crawl.
SecuChecker: Free WordPress Security Audit (Headers, SSL, Version Disclosure, Exposures)A no-login look at your WordPress site, exactly what an attacker sees from outside. It checks eighteen black-box signals: security headers, SSL/TLS, version leaks, xmlrpc.php, readme.html, exposed wp paths and more.
Securing a Linux Ubuntu 24.04 Server: SysAdmin Hardening ChecklistThe ten things I do to a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 VPS before it ever sees real traffic: SSH keys only on a non-default port, UFW, fail2ban, unattended upgrades, AppArmor in enforce mode, and auditing the rest.
SecurityWatch: Multi-Site Monitoring (Uptime, Defacement, TLS, Headers Regression), Free, No BackendAdd the sites you care about to a watchlist and it runs a five-point check on each: uptime, a content hash to catch defacement, TLS, and whether your security headers quietly regressed. No backend, it all lives in your browser.
Setting Up Wazuh SIEM on a Budget: VM, Agents and Dashboard (2026)You don’t need a budget to run a real SIEM. Three honest hardware paths for single-node Wazuh, under 100 EUR, under 200 EUR, or under 10 EUR a month, on a Raspberry Pi 5, an Intel N100 box, or a small cloud VM.
Vaultwarden: Self-Host Your Own Bitwarden in 20 Minutes (2026)Run your own Bitwarden in about twenty minutes and stop paying for a password manager. Docker Compose plus Caddy for automatic TLS, your first admin signup, locking down open registration, and pointing your apps at it.
Web Application Security Audits 2026: A Practical Methodology for Modern StacksTwenty-five things I check before calling a modern web app secure, written for stacks that exist in 2026. Transport, the application code itself, the supply chain, and where the secrets live, across REST and GraphQL.
WordPress Security Audit 2026: The 18 Checks That Block 90% of Automated AttacksGive it an afternoon, about 90 minutes really, and you’ll shut the door on the automated attacks that hit every WordPress site. Security headers, TLS hygiene, version leaks, xmlrpc, and REST user enumeration, the eighteen checks that stop most of it.
WordPress Security Audit in 10 Steps: 2026 Practical GuideThe same hardening pass boiled down to ten steps you can knock out in 90 minutes. PHP and WordPress versions, plugin CVEs, HTTP headers, htaccess rules, SSL, and the rest of the usual suspects.
AI Tools 18
Token counting, sharper prompts, sanity-checking what a model spits back. Mostly though it’s about guessing the bill before it lands, because I’ve been burned there. And working out which model to even bother with, which honestly changes month to month.
AI API Compatibility Tester: Translate OpenAI Requests to Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, Groq, Ollama (2026)Every provider speaks almost-but-not-quite the same API. Paste an OpenAI-format request and it shows you what survives the trip across seven providers and ten features, then hands you working code for Anthropic, Gemini and the rest.
AI Cost Calculator: Monthly Bill for GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3 (2026)Before you wire an LLM into production, find out what it’ll cost you a month. Plug in your usage and it estimates the monthly and yearly bill across GPT-5.5, GPT-5 mini, Claude Opus 4.8 in both standard and fast mode, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.
AI Hallucination Risk Estimator: Score LLM Output Before You Ship ItModels lie with total confidence, so check before you ship. Paste an LLM’s answer and it scores how likely it’s making things up, running twelve heuristics that sniff out unsupported claims, invented citations and the usual tells.
AI Prompt Generator: Build Clear Prompts, Output Rules and Review ChecksA good prompt is mostly the stuff you forgot to say. This walks you through it, the task, the audience, the facts, the constraints and the output contract, then saves the result in your browser with variants and templates you can reuse.
AI Text Cleaner: Clean Drafts, Compare Paragraph Edits and Review ReadabilityTidy up a rough draft right in the browser, nothing uploaded. It compares your paragraphs side by side, offers a few edit modes, trims the filler, checks readability, and lets you protect terms you don’t want it touching.
AI Tools: Prompt, Outline, FAQ, Meta Description and Writing HelpersAll the AI writing helpers, collected here. Down-to-earth bits for sharper prompts, outlines, FAQs, meta descriptions and cleaner drafts, the ones I reach for in an actual writing workflow.
Build a Local AI Agent with Ollama + Qwen 2.5: Complete 2026 GuideRun a capable AI agent on your own machine, no API key, no data leaving the box. Install Ollama on Windows, Linux or macOS, pick a Qwen 2.5 model that fits your VRAM, and wire it up end to end.
Changelog Generator: Release Notes, SemVer Check and Keep a Changelog MarkdownTurn a pile of commits and scribbled notes into release notes people will actually read. It sorts changes into categories, writes the Keep a Changelog markdown, sanity-checks your SemVer bump, and drafts the migration notes.
ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini in 2026: Technical Comparison by Use CaseNo “it depends” hand-waving here. I put GPT-5 turbo, Claude Opus 4.8 (with its new fast mode and effort control) and Gemini 3.0 Pro head to head across ten real use cases, and say which one I’d actually pick for each.
Code Comment Generator: Docblocks, Inline Notes, Review Comments and Maintenance GuidanceGood comments explain why, not what the next line obviously does. Feed it the intent and constraints behind a bit of code and it drafts docblocks, inline notes and review comments that stay focused on the reasoning.
FAQ Generator: Build Questions, Answer Drafts, Content Gaps and JSON-LDBuild an FAQ that answers what people actually ask, not filler. It works from your page’s intent and visible text, can pull clues from a public URL, drafts the answers, flags gaps you missed, and outputs the JSON-LD to match.
How to Build Specialized AI Datasets (2026 Tutorial)Fine-tuning lives or dies on the dataset, and that’s the part everyone rushes. This 2026 walkthrough covers the whole thing: schema, sourcing, cleaning, labelling, train/test splits, the tooling I use, and a worked example to follow.
llms.txt Generator: Help ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini Read Your Site RightThe flip side of blocking bots: if you do want AI agents to read your site, hand them a clean map. This generates llms.txt and llms-full.txt, a tidy Markdown index that points ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini at the pages that matter.
Meta Description Generator: Score Snippets, Preview SERP Copy and Import Page CluesWrite a meta description that doesn’t get truncated and might even earn the click. Import a URL to start, get variants by search intent, watch the character count and pixel width, preview it in the SERP, and edit until it fits.
Prompt Improver: Diagnose Weak Prompts, Rewrite Instructions and Add Review ChecksGot a prompt that almost works? Paste it in and it tells you what’s vague, rewrites it cleaner, shows the before-and-after side by side, asks the questions you skipped, and gives you both a thorough version and a quick one.
Regex Generator: Build Patterns, Named Captures, Test Cases and Code SnippetsDescribe what you want to match and let it write the regex, properly, with word boundaries, the right flags and named captures. It throws positive and negative test cases at the pattern and hands you ready snippets in a few languages.
SEO Content Brief Generator: Search Intent, Outline Map, FAQ Draft and Editorial ChecklistHand a writer this and they’ll actually know what to do. It builds a technical SEO brief, the page’s intent, title and meta angles, what each section needs to prove, an FAQ schema draft, internal links, and a checklist before publish.
Token Counter for GPT-5, Claude 4 & Gemini 3: Cost & Context EstimatorPaste any text and see how many tokens it really is for GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3. It works out the input and output cost per model and shows how much of each context window you’re about to eat.
SEO Technique 5
Nobody enjoys technical SEO, but you need it anyway. Sitemaps, canonicals, meta tags, indexability, and the Core Web Vitals stuff Google keeps moving the goalposts on.
Core Web Vitals INP Checker: Field + Lab Data via PageSpeed InsightsCheck any URL against the 2026 Core Web Vitals: INP, LCP, CLS, FCP and TTFB. You get real field data from the Chrome UX Report alongside the Lighthouse lab numbers, for mobile and desktop, so you see what users feel, not just a synthetic score.
INP Optimization 2026: How to Fix Interaction to Next Paint on Mobile (with Case Study)INP took over from FID and broke a lot of people’s good scores overnight. Here are the twelve things that wreck it, how to profile them in DevTools, and a real site I dragged from 480ms down to 120ms.
Mastering Google Core Web Vitals 2026: LCP, INP, CLS Complete GuideThe full picture on LCP, INP and CLS for 2026. How to measure each one honestly, plus a separate optimisation playbook per metric so you’re not guessing which lever moves which number.
Understanding Core Web Vitals 2026: Technical Guide with Code ExamplesThe hands-on version, for people who learn from diffs. Before-and-after code for LCP, INP and CLS, Lighthouse captures I actually read out for you, and tuning aimed squarely at a WordPress and Cloudflare setup.
Web Workers 2026: Optimizing Performance with Practical Patterns and INP ImpactGet heavy work off the main thread so the page stays responsive and your INP stops suffering. Real Web Worker patterns for 2026: offloading compute, streaming data, OffscreenCanvas, transferable objects, SharedArrayBuffer and Comlink.
Network & IP 25
What I reach for when something’s “down” and nobody can say why. DNS, WHOIS, IP lookups, traceroute, port checks, latency. And the eternal question of whose CDN you’re actually talking to.
CDN Detector: Identify Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront and 21 Other CDNs Behind Any URLWondering who’s actually serving a site? Drop in a URL and it names the CDN behind it: Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront, Azure Front Door, BunnyCDN, KeyCDN, Vercel, Netlify, jsDelivr and a couple dozen more.
Common Ports List: Searchable Well-Known TCP/UDP Port Reference“Wait, what runs on 3389 again?” Search this instead of guessing. Every well-known port 0 to 1023 plus the famous registered ones, MySQL 3306, RDP 3389, Postgres 5432 and the rest, with what each is for.
DNS Lookup Tool: Check A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS and CAA RecordsPull a domain’s DNS records in one shot: A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS, SOA, CAA, plus SPF and DMARC hints and the TTLs. It compares resolvers too. Half the battle, when something resolves for you but not for them.
DNS over HTTPS Implementation Guide for Sysadmins (2026)DoH gets pitched as a privacy silver bullet; the reality is more nuanced. This walks through what it actually protects, whether to use a public provider or host your own, and how to set it up on Windows, Linux and the browser.
DNS Propagation Checker: Compare Google, Cloudflare and Server-Side DNS AnswersJust changed a record and want to know if it’s live yet? This queries Google Public DNS, Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and our own resolver at the same time, so you can spot the lag between them and stop refreshing for nothing.
Domain Health Check: DNS, WHOIS, SSL, HTTP, Robots and Sitemap AuditOne domain in, a full health snapshot out. It pulls the DNS records, WHOIS, the SSL cert, the HTTP response, robots.txt and the sitemap together, so you get the whole picture without running six separate tools.
HTTP Headers Checker: Security, Cache, Redirect and Response AuditSee exactly what headers a server sends back. It grades your security policy coverage, reads the cache and compression clues, follows the redirect path, checks your cookie flags, and shows the raw server response underneath it all.
HTTP/3 and QUIC Checker: Test Alt-Svc, Detect h3 Support, See How to Enable ItFind out whether a site has actually turned on HTTP/3 and QUIC, or just claims to. It probes the URL, reads the alt-svc header, works out the server software (Cloudflare, Fastly, LiteSpeed and friends), and tells you how to enable it if it’s missing.
IP Geolocation Lookup: Country, City, ASN and ISP CheckDrop in a public IP or domain and see roughly where it sits: country, city, ASN, ISP, time zone and who owns the network. And it’s honest about how rough “city” really is: IP geolocation is a guess, not GPS.
IP Subnet Calculator: CIDR, Netmask, Broadcast, Binary and VLSM PlannerSubnetting in your head is a party trick; this just does the math. Give it a CIDR prefix or netmask and it lays out the network ID, broadcast, usable range and the binary, checks if an address belongs, and helps you split a block evenly or plan VLSM.
MikroTik vs Ubiquiti for Prosumer Home Networks (2026)RouterOS power versus UniFi polish, the home-network argument that never ends. I pit MikroTik RouterOS 7 against Ubiquiti UniFi OS 4 for 2026, with reference builds under 400 EUR and an honest take on the CLI-versus-GUI tradeoff.
netsh wlan Commands: Windows Wi-Fi Cheat Sheet (Show Password, Profiles, Hotspot)Yes, you can recover that saved Wi-Fi password from the command line, and 71 other things netsh wlan does. A searchable, copy-ready list for Windows: reveal passwords, list and forget profiles, export them, run a hotspot and more.
Network Tools: IP, DNS, Subnet, WHOIS, Ports and TracerouteOne page, the whole network toolbox. IP lookups, DNS records, reverse DNS, subnet planning, WHOIS, port checks and traceroute, all running online with nothing to install.
pfSense vs OPNsense for Home Networks: Which to Pick in 2026Two forks of the same idea, and people get oddly tribal about it. I compare pfSense CE 2.7 and OPNsense 24.7 for 2026, the UI, how often each one ships, the plugin scene, and how they perform on prosumer hardware.
Ping Test Tool: HTTP Latency, Response Time and Uptime CheckPing a URL over HTTP, over and over, and watch how it behaves. It tracks response time, status, success rate, average latency and jitter, so a flaky endpoint can’t hide behind one lucky request.
Port Checker Tool: Test TCP Reachability, Services and Exposure RiskFind out whether a port is actually reachable from the outside on a host or public IP. Service profiles tell you what should be listening, exposure notes flag what shouldn’t be open, and you can copy a tidy report for firewall debugging.
Public IP vs Local IP: NAT, Private Ranges and Port Forwarding HelperThe classic “why can’t anyone reach my server” puzzle, untangled. Put your local IP next to your public one, see which ranges are private, get NAT explained, and catch the carrier-grade NAT clues that quietly kill port forwarding.
Redirect Checker: Redirect Chain, Variant and Canonical Flow AuditFollow a URL through every hop until it lands. It traces the full redirect chain, compares the http/https and www variants, checks your migration URLs, and shows where the canonical finally points.
Reverse DNS Lookup: PTR Record and Forward Match CheckGo from an IP back to a name and check it holds up. It reads the PTR record, confirms the forward lookup matches it, and explains why mail servers care so much about that match being clean.
Self-Hosted VPN with WireGuard: Complete Setup Guide (2026)Your own VPN on a 5 EUR VPS, and WireGuard makes it genuinely simple. Decide between split and full tunnel, generate your Curve25519 keys, write the server and client configs, and bring the peers up.
SSL Certificate Checker: Expiry, SAN Coverage, Issuer and HTTPS AuditLook at the actual certificate a host is serving. When does it expire, who issued it, what subject and SANs does it cover, and does it include the hostname you expected? Worth a glance before a renewal sneaks up on you.
Traceroute Visualizer: Analyze Hops, Latency, Timeouts and Route OutputRaw traceroute output is a wall of numbers; this makes it readable. Paste the output from traceroute or tracert and it lays out the hops, RTT samples and timeouts, adds context to each IP, and points at where the latency suddenly jumps.
Website Status Checker: HTTP Status, Availability and Response Path AuditIs it down, or is it just you? This hits a site repeatedly, compares the final response against the first headers and the redirect path, and builds an availability report you can share.
What Is My IP Address? IPv4, IPv6, ISP and Privacy CheckThe classic, but it shows you more than a number. Your public IPv4 and IPv6 (and whether both are exposed), your ISP, ASN and rough location, plus what your browser quietly gives away, with a privacy slant throughout.
WHOIS Lookup Tool: Domain Registrar, Expiry, Status and DNS CheckPull a domain’s WHOIS and get it in plain language: who the registrar is, when it expires, the nameservers, those cryptic status codes, and whether DNSSEC is on. It’ll also nudge you if a renewal is creeping up.
Server & SysAdmin 7
Longer guides and pickers for running boxes that don’t fall over. Ubuntu hardening, Nagios, SSL certs, the never-ending distro argument, plus keeping a quiet eye on all of it.
Choosing a Linux Distribution for Your Team in 2026: A Decision FrameworkPicking a distro by vibes is how you end up regretting it two years in. This is the framework I use instead, weighing four things that actually matter in 2026: your team’s skills, compliance, the app stack, and the support story.
Linux Distro Reference: Commands and Config Files Across 7 Distros (2026)Switch distros and suddenly the commands you know don’t work. Pick your distro, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky, Arch, openSUSE or Alpine, and a topic like networking, firewall, services, logs, packages or users, and see the right way to do it there.
Linux Firewall Comparison 2026: ufw vs firewalld vs nftables vs iptablesFour tools, one job, endless confusion about which to use. I line up iptables, nftables, firewalld and ufw for 2026, show what each distro defaults to, and write the very same rule in all four syntaxes so the differences click.
Migrating from CentOS 7 / 8 to Rocky Linux 9 (or AlmaLinux 9): A Practical 2026 PlaybookCentOS as you knew it is gone, and the clock ran out. Here’s how I move from CentOS 7 or 8 to Rocky Linux 9 (or AlmaLinux 9): the ELevate in-place route, the clean-reinstall route, and the pre-flight checks that stop a migration going sideways.
Network Configuration Across Linux Distros in 2026: netplan, NetworkManager, systemd-networkd ComparedEvery distro seems to configure networking its own stubborn way. I dig into netplan, ifupdown, NetworkManager, systemd-networkd and wicked, and show how each one is wired up across Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Rocky.
Server Monitoring with Nagios on Hyper-V: Step-by-Step Setup Guide (2026)Stand up Nagios Core on a Hyper-V VM and start watching your services. The whole path: build the Ubuntu 24.04 VM, install Nagios 4.5, then wire up HTTP, SSH, MySQL and disk checks so you find out things broke before your users do.
TLS Version Selector and Cipher Suite Generator for nginx, Apache, Caddy 2026Stop copy-pasting a cipher string from a 2015 blog post. Choose a security profile and it picks sensible TLS versions and cipher suites, then writes the matching config for nginx, Apache, Caddy, HAProxy or IIS.
Email Security 7
The stuff that quietly decides whether your mail lands or rots in spam. SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Breach checks too, and tracing where a message really went, which is rarely where you think.
Breach-Safe Email Checker: Privacy-First Risk Review, Domain Signals and Incident PlanCheck an address for risk without ever sending it to a breach database, because handing your email to a lookup service is its own small risk. It reads the account signals, inspects the mail domain, builds a fingerprint locally, and sketches an incident plan.
DKIM Lookup Tool: Check DKIM Selector and Public Key RecordPull a DKIM record by selector and domain and confirm the public key is published where it should be. DKIM lives in a TXT record, and the selector is the part everyone forgets, so this makes it easy to find.
DMARC Record Checker: Policy, Alignment and Reporting AnalysisRead a domain’s DMARC record and actually understand it. It spells out the policy (none, quarantine or reject), how alignment works, and where the reports are set to go, so you know whether it’s protecting anything or just sitting there.
Email & DNS Security Tools: SPF, DMARC, DKIM and Mail DiagnosticsEverything mail-security, parked in one spot. Quick checks for SPF, DMARC, DKIM and MX records, plus a few account-safety bits, the kit for working out why a message landed in spam.
Email Auth Posture Checker: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI in One ScoreOne score that tells you if your email auth is actually solid. It checks SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI for any domain, parses each pillar on its own, probes twelve common DKIM selectors, and hands back a prioritised fix list.
Email DNS Health Checker: MX, SPF, DMARC and Mail Security AuditRun one combined health check across a domain’s mail DNS. It looks at the MX records, then SPF and DMARC together, so you catch the gaps that quietly send your mail to spam before a customer does.
SPF Record Checker: Analyze SPF TXT Records, Includes and PolicyRead a domain’s SPF record and see exactly which servers are cleared to send mail for it. It expands the includes, follows the chain, and shows the policy, handy when an include silently pushes you past the ten-lookup limit.
Online Utilities 39
The junk drawer, except the good kind. Tools I actually use that refused to sit neatly in any of the boxes above, so they live here.
.htaccess Redirect Generator: Apache and Nginx Rules for HTTPS, WWW and URL MigrationsWrite the redirect rules without second-guessing the regex. It builds Apache .htaccess and Nginx blocks for forcing HTTPS, settling on one canonical host, handling trailing slashes and index files, and moving old URLs to new ones.
Broken Link Checker: Status Sample, Redirect Hops, Source Anchors and CSV Fix ListPoint it at a page and it hunts down the dead and redirected links for you. You see the anchor text and where each link actually went, pick internal-only or mixed scope, and walk away with a CSV fix list.
Build a CTF Lab on Hyper-V: Full Walkthrough (2026 Edition)Build a CTF playground on hardware you already own. Turn on the Hyper-V role, carve out three trust-segmented virtual switches, spin up a Kali box to attack from, and drop in targets, all walled off from your real network.
Build a SOC Homelab: Wazuh + Suricata + Elastic Stack (2026 Walkthrough)Build a real detection lab at home and watch attacks light up. Install the Wazuh manager, indexer and dashboard, bolt on Suricata for IDS, enroll Linux, Windows and macOS agents, and start shipping logs you can actually hunt through.
Canonical Tag Checker: Target Status, Noindex Signals, Redirects and URL VariantsA canonical tag pointing at the wrong URL quietly tanks pages. This reads the declared canonical, checks the target’s status and robots signals, follows any redirects, and confirms whether the page is really pointing at itself like it should.
CSP Header Builder: Content Security Policy Generator, Importer and Rollout ChecklistCSP is powerful and brutally easy to get wrong. Build a policy here, or import the one you’ve got, and it flags the weak spots, suggests report-only first, and gives you the server snippet plus advice on rolling it out without breaking the site.
Cyber & Privacy Tools: Password, Phishing, CSP, Firewall and Security HelpersLighter-weight security, the everyday stuff you actually touch. Helpers for password strength, spotting phishing, building CSP, drafting firewall rules and generally keeping your accounts a bit safer.
Firewall Rule Helper: UFW, iptables, nftables, firewalld, Nginx and Cloudflare DraftsDraft a firewall rule and see it written for every engine at once: UFW, iptables, nftables, firewalld, Nginx and Cloudflare. It sanity-checks your CIDR ranges, flags risky port exposure, and always hands you the rollback line for the day you lock yourself out.
Fix: ESXi Host Not Responding / Disconnected in vCenter (2026)vCenter says “Not Responding” but the VMs are still running, classic. Work through it in order: confirm the host is actually up, restart hostd and vpxa, clear a stuffed log partition, then check the network path back to vCenter.
Gzip and Brotli Compression Checker: Encoding, Vary and Cache AuditFind out if your server is really compressing responses or just claiming to. It checks the Gzip and Brotli signals, compares what HEAD and GET return, and reads the Vary, cache and redirect headers so you can tell good compression from broken.
Hreflang Checker: Return Links, x-default, Codes and Canonical Alignment AuditHreflang is fussy, and one missing return link breaks the whole set. This audits your HTML alternates, validates the locale codes, checks x-default and the self-reference, lines them up against your canonicals, and samples whether the return links reciprocate.
Hyper-V Error Codes: Searchable Fix Reference (Cause + Resolution)Hyper-V throws cryptic errors and the official docs rarely help. So I collected 77 of them, the common ones and the obscure ones, each with the real cause and the steps to fix it, from “hypervisor not running” on down.
Hyper-V PowerShell Generator: New-VM, Virtual Switches, CheckpointsClicking through the Hyper-V GUI gets old fast. Generate the PowerShell instead: spin up VMs, create External, Internal or Private switches, and manage checkpoints, with New-VM, Set-VM, Set-VMFirmware and the rest filled in for you.
Hyper-V: The Hypervisor Is Not Running, Complete Fix Guide (2026)That maddening “the hypervisor is not running” error, fixed in five gates you check in order: BIOS virtualization, the Hyper-V feature itself, the boot configuration, conflicting software, and the hardware underneath. One of them is the culprit.
Indexability Checker: Status, Robots.txt, Noindex, Canonical, Sitemap and Crawl Signals“Why isn’t this page in Google?” usually has a boring answer. This checks a live URL the way a crawler would, pulling the status, robots.txt, noindex tags, canonical and sitemap signals together so the reason it’s blocked is obvious.
Internal Link Checker: Anchor Audit, Unique Destinations, Status Sample and CSV ReportSee how a page links into the rest of your site. It pulls every link and its anchor text, flags the nofollows and the lazy “click here” anchors, samples the statuses and redirect hops, and hands you a CSV to work from.
Meta Tags Checker: Title, Description, Robots, Canonical and SERP Draft ReviewPull a live page’s metadata and see what Google and the social networks see. It reads the robots and canonical signals, lines up your headings and social fields, then lets you rework the title and description until they’re right.
Online Tools for Network, Server, SEO, AI and Developer ChecksIf you only bookmark one page, make it this one. Every practical tool I’ve put online: IP and DNS, server checks, SEO, AI helpers and developer utilities, gathered so you don’t have to hunt.
Open Graph Preview: Social Card Audit, Image Check and Twitter FallbacksSee how your link will look before you post it, not after it embarrasses you. It previews the Open Graph and Twitter/X cards, checks the fallback fields, confirms the image dimensions, and leaves you a short list to fix.
Page Size Checker: HTML Weight, Resource Inventory, Third-Party Mix and Performance ActionsFind out what’s actually weighing your page down. It measures the HTML bytes, lists every script, stylesheet, image and embed it references, and calls out the third-party origins quietly bloating the load, with concrete things to trim.
Password Strength Checker: Local Entropy, Weak Pattern Detection and Security ChecklistTest a password without it ever leaving your browser. That’s the whole point. It estimates the real entropy and how long it’d take to crack, spots the tired patterns, and can generate a passphrase that’s both strong and memorable.
Phishing URL Checklist: Parse Suspicious Links, Decode Redirects and Review Risk SignalsGot a link that smells off? Check it here instead of clicking it. It pulls apart the hostname and root domain, decodes the parameters, scores the visible phishing tells, and gives you safe next steps, all locally, no visit to the site.
Robots Meta Checker: Noindex, X-Robots-Tag, Snippet Controls and Header AuditA noindex hides in two places, the meta tag and the header, and people forget the second one. This checks both, compares any crawler-specific directives, and reviews your snippet controls so nothing’s accidentally telling Google to stay away.
Robots.txt Generator: Templates, Live Compare, Sitemap Lines and Path TesterWrite a robots.txt without accidentally deindexing yourself. People really do that. Build the rules, test how a crawler reads them, diff your draft against the live file, and copy something safe once the warnings are clear.
Robots.txt Tester: Crawler Rules, Winning Path Match and Sitemap AuditRobots.txt rules don’t apply top to bottom the way people assume; the most specific match wins. Fetch a live file, test a path, pick a user-agent, and it shows you which rule actually wins and lists the sitemaps it declares.
Schema Markup Validator: JSON-LD Graph, Types, Property Coverage and SEO WarningsPull the JSON-LD out of a URL, or paste your own, and see if it’ll actually earn a rich result. It maps the typed graph nodes, checks whether the important properties are present, tidies the blocks, and flags the things Google will grumble about.
SEO Tools: Technical SEO, Indexability, Metadata and Schema ChecksAll the technical-SEO checks, rounded up here. Metadata, robots, sitemaps, canonical tags, social cards and schema, the stuff worth running before you go blaming the content.
Server & Admin Tools: HTTP, SSL, Redirect, Compression and Uptime ChecksServer-admin checks, all under one roof. Quick reads on website status, SSL, redirects, HTTP headers, compression and uptime, the everyday “is this thing healthy” toolkit.
Server Response Time Checker: Average, Median, Slow Edge and Latency StabilityOne slow request tells you nothing; this takes a whole batch. It samples your backend repeatedly, compares the average against the median, hunts the slow outliers, and shows the warmup effect on that first cold hit.
Sitemap Analyzer: XML Index, URL Status Sample and Discovery AuditFeed it a sitemap index or a URL sitemap and it walks the whole thing. It samples the child files, checks that the URLs you’re submitting are clean, and status-checks a selection so you’re not pointing Google at dead pages.
SSL Expiry Monitor: Multi-Domain Renewal Watchlist and Certificate DatesIt’s always the cert nobody was watching that expires. Drop your hosts into a watchlist, sort by days remaining, set a threshold to warn you early, save the list in your browser, and copy a renewal report when it’s time.
Technical SEO Audit Tool: Crawlability, Metadata, Schema, Links, Robots and Sitemap ChecksA quick technical SEO once-over for any live URL. In one pass it checks crawlability, metadata, schema, links, robots and the sitemap, so you get a fast read on what’s holding a page back.
Twitter Card Preview: X Metadata, Fallback Sources and Image Readiness CheckX falls back to your Open Graph tags when the card tags are missing, and that trips people up. This audits the Twitter/X card fields, shows what falls back to OG or your SEO tags, previews both the summary and large layouts, and checks the image.
Uptime Checker: Availability Runs, Latency Stability and Downtime BudgetEver wondered what “three nines” actually buys you in real downtime? This runs repeated uptime checks, lets you set an availability policy, watches status and latency stability, and turns those uptime targets into a downtime budget you can picture.
VMware ESXi Error Reference: Searchable Fix Database (PSOD, APD, vMotion)When ESXi falls over, you want the fix, not a forum thread from 2014. So I gathered 70 common vSphere and ESXi errors, each with the cause and the steps to resolve it, including the PSOD, APD and PDL storage failures everyone dreads.
VMware ESXi Purple Screen of Death (PSOD): Diagnose and Recover (2026)A purple screen on ESXi is alarming, but it’s usually readable if you know where to look. This decodes the exception and backtrace, helps you tell a driver fault from hardware or a heap issue, captures the coredump, and gets the host back up.
VMware PowerCLI Command Generator: VM, Snapshots, Networking, esxcliDoing it once in the GUI is fine; doing it fifty times calls for PowerCLI. Generate the scripts to create and manage vSphere VMs, take snapshots, set up ESXi virtual switches and VMkernel adapters, and run esxcli, ready to paste.
VMware Workstation and Hyper-V on the Same Machine (2026 Fix)The “Device/Credential Guard is not compatible” error used to mean picking a side. Now you’ve got two ways out: keep Hyper-V and move to VMware Workstation 16+ on the Windows Hypervisor Platform, or turn Hyper-V off entirely. I walk through both.
WordPress Security Hardening Checklist: 34 Scored Controls with Copy-Paste FixesWork through 34 WordPress hardening controls and watch your score climb as you go. They’re grouped into seven layers, WAF, HTTPS and headers, login, updates, file permissions and more, and each one comes with a copy-paste fix.
