https://blog.fortrabbit.com/tag/opinion en Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:59:26 GMT 10 https://blog.fortrabbit.com/findhost-a-register-of-web-hosts https://blog.fortrabbit.com/findhost-a-register-of-web-hosts Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion chronicles I have built an openly-licensed, ratings-free register of web hosting providers. Why? This is the story of a side project that grew out of internal competitor research.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/apm-for-php https://blog.fortrabbit.com/apm-for-php Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A take on PHP application performance monitoring and meta-observability. Application Performance Monitoring can help big time researching performance issues after and before they come critical. An overview.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/why-we-dont-do-1-click-installers https://blog.fortrabbit.com/why-we-dont-do-1-click-installers Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Why fortrabbit doesn't offer 1-click installers — and the local-first workflow we recommend for shipping real PHP projects. 1-click installers make great demos. They're poor starting points for a real project — and we think the trade-off isn't worth making.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/us-against-them https://blog.fortrabbit.com/us-against-them Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A German company on American infrastructure serving a global customer base. On EU data sovereignty, and what European should mean. We are a German company running on American infrastructure, serving a global customer base. That is hard to defend these days. Caught between geopolitical fault lines.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cold-outreach https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cold-outreach Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:01:03 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion An inbox full of AI-written cold outreach, collected over weeks and read closely. What the most sophisticated spam so far looks like. My inbox is full of unsolicited business proposals. The senders know my name, my mail, my company, and often specific details about our company, despite most of this information never being publicly listed. AI meets leaked customer data.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/modern-php-monoliths https://blog.fortrabbit.com/modern-php-monoliths Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:17:01 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Interactive interfaces without splitting the stack: how a modern PHP monolith competes with a decoupled headless architecture. Web pages are so yesterday. Single-page apps are the shit. Users want interactive experiences. But you don't have to get headless right away. This is an introduction to coupled systems with PHP and JavaScript.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/headless-php https://blog.fortrabbit.com/headless-php Mon, 03 Nov 2025 08:16:08 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Decoupled systems with a JavaScript frontend and a PHP backend: what headless actually means, how it is built, and when it pays off. Decopuled systems. Frontend in JavaScript. Backend in PHP. Why. How. If.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/chromopoly https://blog.fortrabbit.com/chromopoly Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:44:24 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Chrome holds around 65 percent of the browser market. What that concentration means for competition, privacy and web standards. The Google Chrome team is pushing the web forward. I am worried about competition, privacy and the future of web standards. No revealing news here, just my personal view based on vague pre-assumptions.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/building-websites-in-the-age-of-ai https://blog.fortrabbit.com/building-websites-in-the-age-of-ai Tue, 22 Jul 2025 22:03:31 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion AI site builders generate code, content and layout in seconds. What that leaves for the people who build websites for a living. Not too long ago, building a website meant crafting mockups in Photoshop, hand-coding HTML and PHP, wrangling CSS. Then came page builders, no-code and low-code tools. Now, with the rise of AI, the ground is shifting again. What does it possible mean for us? This is my unprofessional opinion.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/web-hosting-and-open-source https://blog.fortrabbit.com/web-hosting-and-open-source Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:46:16 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion changelog It's complicated. The relation between open source and web hosting from our point of view This is not about WordPress founder Matt, who is angry about the web hosting service WP-Engine. It's a much smaller story, it's ours.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/action-oriented-ux https://blog.fortrabbit.com/action-oriented-ux Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Action-oriented UX puts the verb first, closer to how people speak and think, instead of the object-first layouts most dashboards use. This is usability experience concept. Verb first interfaces to be closer to natural language and human thinking.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/on-horizontal-scaling https://blog.fortrabbit.com/on-horizontal-scaling Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Why the new fortrabbit platform drops horizontal scaling, a signature feature of the Pro Stack, and what replaces it. Some clients asked us why we don't plan to provide horizontal scaling for the new platform in the making any more. Let me try to explain.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-and-js https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-and-js Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion PHP and JavaScript have grown apart. What is missing between them in 2024, seen from a company that hosts one and serves the other. Is something missing to bring together JS and PHP?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/image-optimization-services-overview https://blog.fortrabbit.com/image-optimization-services-overview Wed, 14 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A field guide to image processing and optimization services: what problem they solve, which providers exist, and the alternatives. Learn about image processing service providers here. What are they? What problem do they solve? What options and alternatives are available?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/privacy-shield-obsolete-our-thoughts https://blog.fortrabbit.com/privacy-shield-obsolete-our-thoughts Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion The European Court of Justice invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield. What that means for a hosting platform and for its clients. The European Court of Justice (EUCJ) invalidated the Privacy Shield agreement recently. This is what clients may want to know.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/on-php-deadlines https://blog.fortrabbit.com/on-php-deadlines Thu, 06 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.0 deadlines: Why is so much old PHP around? What we will do!

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/open-source-at-fortrabbit https://blog.fortrabbit.com/open-source-at-fortrabbit Mon, 30 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Props to the OSS communities and highlighting some of our open source contributions. fortrabbit wouldn't be possible without great open source projects. So we are thinking about ways to give back.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-to-get-good-support https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-to-get-good-support Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Read, search, ask — how to write a support request that gets a useful answer quickly, and what makes hosting support slow down. Customer service is crucial, especially for hosting. Help us helping you! Get better answers faster. Learn how to ask.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/market-overview-transactional-mails https://blog.fortrabbit.com/market-overview-transactional-mails Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion What transactional email services are for — confirmations, invoices, password resets — and which providers are worth a look. This field guide helps understanding commercial services for transactional e-mails. What are they good for anyways?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-we-do-transactional-mail https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-we-do-transactional-mail Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer chronicles webdev opinion Our real-live practices on auto-generated client e-mail communication. Sending triggered standardized e-mails to clients is part of almost every web application. To get this right is crucial for business. This is about our own 'worst' practices — a nerdy article covering communication, design and web tech (PHP related).

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/file-based-cms-2016 https://blog.fortrabbit.com/file-based-cms-2016 Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Thoughts on flat file CMS and static site generators, mostly PHP-related. Let's have a look at different types of database-less CMS — the candidates, the pros, the cons and what you need to consider when it comes to deployment & hosting.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/http2-reality-check https://blog.fortrabbit.com/http2-reality-check Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Object Storage — an integrated S3-compatible asset storage. One of the features is HTTP/2 support. So we were curious to see the performance improvements: How much faster is it actually? TLDR: It depends. And it turned out that testing is never easy.]]> HTTP/2 promised faster delivery. What measurements on a real PHP hosting platform actually showed, and where the gains went. We have recently launched our Object Storage — an integrated S3-compatible asset storage. One of the features is HTTP/2 support. So we were curious to see the performance improvements: How much faster is it actually? TLDR: It depends. And it turned out that testing is never easy.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/why-we-dont-do-add-ons https://blog.fortrabbit.com/why-we-dont-do-add-ons Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Insights why we will not offer an Add-On program soon and what we have instead We have long thought about bringing Add-Ons to fortrabbit to make the service offering more versatile. Now, after lots' of research and discussions, we can finally conclude: We won't do it — for now. Here is why and what instead.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-rerevisited https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-rerevisited Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Is PaaS dead? Trends, pivots and troubles in PHP cloud hosting in 2015, seen from inside one of the companies competing in it. A few years ago tech press and analysts praised the public PaaS model. What's going on now?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/ecommerce-status-quo-2016 https://blog.fortrabbit.com/ecommerce-status-quo-2016 Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A look at PHP e-commerce software in 2016, for the developers and entrepreneurs still building custom shops against Amazon. We are constantly on the lookout for new software. This is a brief look on current developments in the e-commerce section.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/httpspeedy https://blog.fortrabbit.com/httpspeedy Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion TLS, SNI, certificate authorities and HTTP/2, and why a hosting platform should not rush any of them into production.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cms-quo-vadis https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cms-quo-vadis Fri, 09 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT Oliver Stark opinion Content management systems went quiet in the PHP conversation. Are they ready for the cloud, and what would that even require?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/about-paas-pricing https://blog.fortrabbit.com/about-paas-pricing Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Value-based against cost-based pricing for a hosting service, written when Heroku dropped its free tier and changed the entry plan.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-hosting-possibilities https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-hosting-possibilities Tue, 05 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A stubborn look at hosting options for developers — shared, VPS, cloud and PaaS — and which of them fits which kind of project.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/battling-billing https://blog.fortrabbit.com/battling-billing Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion How hustling with accounting keeps us away from developing our service.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/20-years-pretty-home-pages https://blog.fortrabbit.com/20-years-pretty-home-pages Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion PHP turned twenty. An infographic through the history of the language that still powers most of the pretty home pages on the web.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-revisited-php-cloud-overview https://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-revisited-php-cloud-overview Mon, 19 May 2014 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A subjective insider tour through the PHP cloud hosting scene of 2014: who arrived, who struggled, and what changed since 2012.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/first-fortran-paas https://blog.fortrabbit.com/first-fortran-paas Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion fortrabbit announces the world's first Fortran platform as a service, with a new stack and full support. Published 1 April 2014.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/laracon-observations https://blog.fortrabbit.com/laracon-observations Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Notes from Laracon 2013 in Amsterdam, on the relationship between Symfony and Laravel and where the PHP framework scene was heading.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-we-estimate-hosting-recources https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-we-estimate-hosting-recources Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 GMT Ulrich Kautz webdev opinion How a hosting provider turns vague expectations into concrete plans: the Map your App decision helper and the reasoning behind it. One of the major problems all hosting providers have to solve is to make it transparent to the customer what kind of resources she needs. Our Map your App helps.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/hosting-performance-hosting-convenience https://blog.fortrabbit.com/hosting-performance-hosting-convenience Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Hosting is still argued over price and performance. The case for judging it by convenience instead, from a PHP platform startup.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/case-study-sudden-traffic-peak https://blog.fortrabbit.com/case-study-sudden-traffic-peak Sun, 30 Jun 2013 20:07:19 GMT Oliver Stark opinion A case study of an agency site hit by a sudden traffic peak, what broke, and how the hosting setup was adjusted while it was happening.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/free-web-hosting https://blog.fortrabbit.com/free-web-hosting Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Free PHP hosting is one of the most frequent searches leading to fortrabbit. Why the offer does not exist, and what it would really cost.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-idea-of-decoupled-hosting https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-idea-of-decoupled-hosting Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Code in git, dependencies in Composer, assets in object storage, mail in a service: the case for modular, decoupled hosting.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/where-to-host-my-website-now https://blog.fortrabbit.com/where-to-host-my-website-now Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion IaaS, PaaS, bare metal, shared or managed hosting: how to decide, written for clients whose old hosting platform was being retired.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-cloud-economically-attractive-but-what-the-about-ecological-impact https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-cloud-economically-attractive-but-what-the-about-ecological-impact Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion The cloud: economically attractive, but what the about ecological impact?

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/what-the-hosting-and-the-meat-market-have-in-common https://blog.fortrabbit.com/what-the-hosting-and-the-meat-market-have-in-common Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Brutal price competition produces factory farming in meat and something similar in hosting. An illustrated argument about cheap.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/release-early-release-often https://blog.fortrabbit.com/release-early-release-often Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT Oliver Stark opinion Going generally available without a public beta period: the case for launching a hosting service early and iterating in the open.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-renaissance-collection https://blog.fortrabbit.com/php-renaissance-collection Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion A collection of links on the modern side of PHP, gathered when the language was shaking off its spaghetti-code reputation.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/freemium-vs-bootstrapped https://blog.fortrabbit.com/freemium-vs-bootstrapped Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Building a PaaS in Berlin without venture capital: what bootstrapping decides about pricing, pace and the product itself.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/looking-for-the-perfect-php-hosting-platform https://blog.fortrabbit.com/looking-for-the-perfect-php-hosting-platform Thu, 06 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT Oliver Stark opinion A manifest for what a PHP platform as a service should do, written in 2012 when none of the existing ones came close to it.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/beta-survey-results https://blog.fortrabbit.com/beta-survey-results Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion What 160 developers told us about their PHP workflows, hosting and tools, and how the answers shaped the platform we then built.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/www-musings-about-a-subdomain https://blog.fortrabbit.com/www-musings-about-a-subdomain Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion The www subdomain is optional, hard to say out loud, and still everywhere. On apex domains, print designers and old internet habits.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/about-new-online-text-editors https://blog.fortrabbit.com/about-new-online-text-editors Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion webdev A first look at browser-based code editors and web IDEs in 2012 — what the category promised, and whether it was any good yet.

]]> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-freemium-hosting-business-models-our-thoughts https://blog.fortrabbit.com/the-freemium-hosting-business-models-our-thoughts Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT Frank Lämmer opinion Will small hosting plans end up free? Someone always pays for the resources — a look at freemium in hosting after AppFog's pricing.

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