Newsroom
What we are building
Company news, product updates and notes from the team building Pracandy's products.
Features
Deploying to a VPS From GitHub Actions Without a Platform
Deploying to a VPS with GitHub Actions replaces the hosting dashboard with a script that runs on your own infrastructure.
22 October 2026
Features
One Postgres Database for Several Products
Running one postgres database for multiple apps is a practical choice when the total data volume and compute load fit comfortably on a single machine.
21 October 2026
Features
What Has to Be Ready Before You Take Money
Payments, refunds, terms, support and the legal pages, without over-engineering any of it.
20 October 2026
Features
Turning a Side Project Into Something People Pay For
The gap between a working project and a product, and the parts nobody warns you about.
19 October 2026
Features
Pricing a First Product When You Have No Data
Picking a number you can defend, and what to change once people start paying or refusing.
18 October 2026
Features
Getting the First Ten Customers Without an Audience
What works when nobody knows the product exists, and how long it realistically takes.
17 October 2026
Features
What Turning Long Videos Into Shorts Actually Takes
The steps between a two-hour recording and a Short worth posting: finding the moment, cropping to vertical, narration, word-by-word captions, music, scheduling. Which steps a tool like Fresta can take over and which still need a person's judgement.
16 October 2026
Features
Building a Wallpaper App With No Ads
Why most wallpaper apps fill the screen with ads, what it costs to run one without them (curation, image hosting, an APK outside the Play Store), and the trade-offs PracandyWalls made to promise no ads for life.
15 October 2026
Features
Why GamingCap Clips From Recordings, Not While You Play
The design choice behind GamingCap: reading the kill feed of a finished recording and checking the player name, instead of a hotkey or replay buffer running during the match. What that gains (nothing running in game, works on phone recordings, finds every knock) and what it gives up (you need the recording first).
14 October 2026
Features
Free Tools Worth Using as a Freelancer in India
What is genuinely free, what is free until it matters, and what to pay for early.
13 October 2026
Features
The Tools a One-Person Business Actually Needs
A short list that covers invoicing, a site, analytics and payments, and what can wait.
12 October 2026
Features
Why a Static Site Cannot Take Payments
Where the secret has to live, and what a webhook is actually proving.
11 October 2026
Features
Versioning an API When You Are the Only Consumer
When /v1 is worth it and when it is ceremony.
10 October 2026
Features
Subdomain or Subdirectory for Your Blog
What each does for SEO, complexity and deployment, without the folklore.
9 October 2026
Features
When a Side Project Starts Paying for Itself
Hosting costs, the break-even point, and what changes once money is involved.
8 October 2026
Features
Certificates That Renew Themselves
Automatic TLS, what breaks renewal, and how to notice before it expires.
7 October 2026
Features
What to Log When You Are the Only One Reading It
Structured events over prose, and the fields that answer a question at 2am.
6 October 2026
Features
Verifying a Webhook Properly
Signatures, raw bodies, idempotency and replay. The mistakes that grant access for free.
1 October 2026
Features
How Much VPS You Actually Need
Reading memory pressure properly, and the difference between used and available.
30 September 2026
Features
A Deploy Pipeline for a Static Site That Refuses to Break It
Build, verify, then publish. Guards that catch a bad build before users do.
29 September 2026
Features
Configuration That Silently Does Nothing
A practical checklist for a missing environment variable: verify the process environment, distinguish build-time from runtime values, and fail loudly on missing required configuration. Do not claim CRLF automatically becomes part of a variable name; explain a concrete parser or shell failure only when it is actually supported.
28 September 2026
Features
Rate Limiting an API Nobody Is Attacking Yet
Why it is worth doing early and how little code it takes.
27 September 2026
Features
Backing Up Postgres Without a Managed Service
pg_dump, retention, offsite copies and the restore test that makes it real.
26 September 2026
Features
systemd Timers Instead of Cron
Logging, dependencies, start limits and what cron cannot tell you when a job fails.
25 September 2026
Features
Where Docker Earns Its Keep and Where It Does Not
Container overhead against a single VPS with systemd. When the isolation is worth it.
24 September 2026
Features
A Backup You Have Not Restored Is a Guess
What a real restore test involves, and the specific moment a backup turned out to hold one row instead of forty-two.
23 September 2026
Features
Every New Subdomain Costs More Than You Think
DNS, certificates, sitemaps, analytics, a privacy page and a deploy path. The recurring overhead of launching one more thing.
22 September 2026
Features
Nobody Reads Their Own Logs, Including Me
Structured logging is worthless if nothing surfaces it. What to alert on, what to sample, and how to make a log line you will understand in six months.
21 September 2026
Features
What Machine-Written Content Is Actually Good For
Where generated text holds up — structured data, calendars, listings — and where it produces something nobody wants to read. Drawn from running it in production.
20 September 2026
Features
In Defence of Boring Technology
Postgres, systemd timers and static files against the current fashion. Where boring wins and where it genuinely holds you back.
19 September 2026
Features
Deploy Scripts Should Refuse, Not Warn
A deploy that checks its own output and exits non-zero beats a warning nobody reads. Concrete guards worth adding.
18 September 2026
Features
Handling Secrets When There Is No Secrets Manager
Environment files, file permissions, what not to put in a git repository, and how to rotate something that leaked.
17 September 2026
Features
What Consent Mode Does to Your Analytics Numbers
Why a cookie banner makes your visitor counts modelled rather than measured, and how to read the numbers you get afterwards.
16 September 2026
Features
The Small Part of SEO That Actually Matters
Canonical tags, sitemaps, indexable routes and honest titles. The parts that are engineering rather than guesswork, and what is safe to ignore.
15 September 2026
Features
Building the Thing You Need Yourself First
Why products that begin as a tool for your own problem tend to survive, and where that instinct misleads you.
14 September 2026
Features
Everything I Was Sure About and Measured Wrong
Specific cases where an assumption about performance, traffic or user behaviour turned out to be wrong, and what the measurement was that settled it.
13 September 2026
Features
When Automating a Task Stops Paying for Itself
The honest arithmetic: time to build, time to maintain, and the failure modes automation adds. Where the line actually falls.
12 September 2026
Features
Shipping Alone: What Is Safe to Skip
Working without a team means choosing what not to build. Which practices still pay for themselves at one person, and which are cargo culted from large teams.
11 September 2026
Features
Database Constraints Are Cheaper Than Bug Reports
CHECK constraints and partial indexes as a way of making an invalid state impossible instead of hoping the application layer holds. With real examples of what they caught.
10 September 2026
Features
Why I Use Caddy Instead of Nginx
Automatic certificates, a config file a person can read, and the specific places it is worse. An honest comparison rather than a recommendation.
9 September 2026
Features
The Real Cost of a Scheduled Job You Forgot About
Jobs that keep succeeding while doing the wrong thing are worse than jobs that fail. Logging, alerting on the outcome rather than the exit code, and why a daily job needs a daily read.
8 September 2026
Features
When a Static Site Beats a Server-Rendered One
A concrete comparison: a static marketing site costs nothing to run and cannot crash at 3am; a server-rendered app buys you a database and personalisation. How to tell which one a project needs.
7 September 2026
Features
Running Five Products on One VPS
What actually shares a machine well and what does not: one Node process behind host-based routing, a static site, a Postgres database, and scheduled jobs. Where the memory goes and when to stop.
7 September 2026