Security hardening done right
Huge thanks to Nikola at Kinsta. We needed to finish origin hardening on our platform and he delivered: POST-only rate limiting on login/register/reset, explicit edge/CDN cache bypass for auth pages, and an origin method allowlist. He explained each step, tested from a non-allowlisted IP, shared headers/logs as proof, and escalated when needed. Zero downtime, zero guesswork. Exactly the partner you want when security matters. Nikola was also totally cool with me bringing an AI checklist—he followed it, improved it, and shipped results. ON EDIT: two months ago I wrote this on LinkedIn. 🌊 GRATITUDE POST 🌊 Here’s one thing the vast majority of people are simply unaware of: ⚠️ Every single site on the internet with a login and password field is under constant attack. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small community platform—bots, brute force attempts, and bad actors are hammering away 24/7. That’s the world we live in online. And here’s the kicker: the difference between a site that stays safe and one that doesn’t often comes down to two things—solid infrastructure and a responsive support team. 🙏 Today I’m reminded why having the right infrastructure partner matters. SurfersConnect.net is still a young platform, but when you’re building an ad-free, community-first social network for surfers, security and uptime are non-negotiable. This morning, I was working with Nat from Kinsta Support, and once again they showed me what world-class support really looks like: ✅ They didn’t just say “everything’s fine.” They spun up a temporary admin account (safely, via the CLI with auto-deletion) to verify our response headers live. ✅ They confirmed protections against brute force, clickjacking, and oversized requests—going beyond the basics to harden our server stack at the NGINX level. ✅ They closed the loop with screenshots and confirmations so there’s no guesswork. This isn’t the first time Kinsta has had our back. A while ago, when I panicked over a DNS outage (while at the height of a bout of Covid to boot), they tracked it down to a server in Mexico City—something that wasn’t even in their scope. They didn’t have to help me, but they did. That’s the difference between “a hosting provider” and a partner you can trust at scale. As a founder, I’ve learned: 👉 The small, behind-the-scenes wins—like NGINX-level security headers that enforce HTTPS-only connections, block clickjacking, and prevent code injection; brute-force protection and login throttling; request filtering that drops oversized or malformed payloads before they touch WordPress; and DNS/DDoS safeguards built into the stack—are what give your users confidence to stay and grow with you. So today’s big wave of gratitude goes to Kinsta and their support team—especially Nat—for proving once again that the right partner doesn’t just keep your site running. They keep your mission moving. 🏄♂️ SurfersConnect.net is about building a surf-centric community and economy, but we can only do that because partners like Kinsta keep the digital ocean safe.