Ten practical guides you’ll actually reach for on a normal day: backups before something breaks, config decisions you make once and live with, and the checklist you run before every deploy. Bookmark this page — it’s meant to be the first place you look, not another article to read once and forget.
Quick reference table
| # | Guide | Use it when… | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Developer Backup Checklist | You’re about to wipe or reinstall your machine | Backups |
| 2 | .gitignore Templates | Starting a new repo or auditing an existing one for leaked secrets | Security |
| 3 | WordPress Backup Guide | You run a WordPress site and don’t have a real recovery plan yet | Backups |
| 4 | Recover a Corrupted Git Repo | A branch disappeared, a commit got overwritten, or Git just won’t cooperate | Git |
| 5 | Pre-Deploy Checklist | Right before you push to production, every time | Deployment |
| 6 | .env Best Practices | Setting up config/secrets for a new project or cleaning up an old one | Security |
| 7 | Detect a Hacked Site | Something looks off on your WordPress or Node site and you need to check fast | Security |
| 8 | JSON vs YAML vs TOML | Choosing a config format for a new project or tool | Config |
| 9 | Cron vs Schedulers vs Queues | Deciding how to automate a recurring or event-triggered task | Automation |
| 10 | Free Developer Tools 2026 | Building out your toolkit without paying for things you don’t need | Tools |
Why this page exists
Most of these came out of real situations — a deploy that should have had a checklist, a config file argument that wasted an afternoon, a backup that didn’t exist when it was needed. If you land here from a search engine seeing your own 2am problem in this table, find the matching row and go straight to it.