The Infrastructure Brief
Practical Website & Infrastructure Advice for Growing Businesses
Practical website and infrastructure advice for businesses that don’t have a full infrastructure team. One short email a week on keeping websites fast, reducing downtime, improving security, avoiding infrastructure mistakes, and understanding what hosting and cloud should actually cost.
- What you get: one problem per issue, what causes it, and something you can check or change this week. Plus the 27-point health checklist when you join.
- Who writes it: the engineer who runs hosting, WordPress, Linux and AWS environments for CloudWatch clients — not a marketing department.
- How often: about once a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Get the Infrastructure Brief
Weekly. Free. You’ll get one confirmation email first — click it and you’re in.
What’s in it
Lessons from running a lot of websites
Each issue takes one problem I keep seeing across the sites and servers CloudWatch manages, explains what actually causes it, and gives you something you can check or change this week.
Keeping websites fast
PHP-FPM, caching that actually hits, database bloat, CDN configuration, and why a site that was fine last month is slow now.
Reducing downtime
How servers run out of memory, why backups fail silently, and the monitoring that tells you before a customer does.
Improving security
Cloudflare and WAF rules that matter for a business site, admin hardening, MFA, and what a compromise actually looks like.
Avoiding infrastructure mistakes
Migrations, DNS, email deliverability, and the ownership gaps that turn a small problem into a lost weekend.
Understanding hosting & cloud costs
Shared vs managed vs VPS vs AWS — what you’re paying for, when it’s worth it, and when cheap becomes expensive.
Start with the checklist
New subscribers get the 27-Point Website & Infrastructure Health Checklist — the same list we work through before taking over any site.
See what’s on itWho it’s for
People who are responsible for a website, without a team behind them
Business owners who are responsible for a website they did not build and cannot afford to have down.
Marketing and web agencies that hand sites over to clients and need the hosting and maintenance side to be right.
IT managers who have a website on their plate alongside everything else, and no infrastructure team behind them.
Companies with no infrastructure team that want to make sensible hosting, security and cost decisions without becoming experts.
Who writes it
An operator, not a marketing department
CloudWatch Solutions is a managed IT and hosting provider based in Rockwood, Michigan, with more than ten years of running infrastructure for small and mid-sized businesses. We run the servers, patch the WordPress sites, configure the Cloudflare rules and answer the 2am alerts for businesses that need that expertise without hiring for it.
The Brief is what we’d tell you if you asked us over coffee: what we see going wrong across the sites and servers we manage, what we check first, and what we’d fix if it were our site.
If you ever want a second set of eyes on your own setup, reply to any issue or ask for a website & infrastructure review.
Common questions
- How often will you email me?
- About once a week. Sometimes less. Never more than twice in a week, and only when there is something worth saying. New subscribers also get a short series of five emails over the first two weeks.
- Is this a sales newsletter?
- No. It is written by the engineer who runs client infrastructure, for business owners and IT managers who have to make decisions about theirs. Occasionally I will mention that CloudWatch can review or take over something — that is the extent of it.
- Do I need to confirm my email?
- Yes. You will get one confirmation link; click it and you are in. Nothing is sent until you do, which keeps the list clean and keeps us out of spam folders.
- Can I unsubscribe?
- Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link. Your address is removed immediately and is never shared or sold.