Here is a list of best practices that SlickStack embraces and hopes to evangelize. In some cases, these practices are “forced” into our configuration and scripts, and in other cases they are optional but enabled by default. We welcome all feedback in our various community channels.
- ICANN-certified domain registrars. No resellers or reseller APIs to avoid more “hops” and DNS instability.
- Domain expires at least 5+ years in the future. Don’t wait to autorenew your domains every year, if you have a “money” site where reputation matters, show the world you’re in business for the long-term and keep your domains registered at least 5+ years into the future at all times.
- AnyCast DNS only. These days AnyCast is mostly everywhere, but some registrars still don’t use it. If you’re on Cloudflare, AnyCast is active… but your registrar should have it too.
- Noindex Tags. Tags should be for internal navigation and usability, and not for search engines indexing, at least by default.
- Noindex Author Pages. Blog author profile pages should be noindexed by default, as the vast majority of sites have empty profile descriptions. Usually only high traffic news websites or very tech savvy companies customize the profile pages into something worth indexing by search engines.
- Noindex Archives. There is almost no reason to allow search engines to index date-based archives.
…more soon!