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  • 4 May 2026 Server update

    Thought I´d give a little update on the last post.

    I am contemplating moving Kanji Koohii to a fully self-managed server. To be fair the shared hosting at HostGator is pretty decent, but it has occasional issues like recently the Php sessions are not working properly which causes login issues (do check the "Remember me" option for now).

    It's also something interesting for me to learn. In theory the response time of the server on a VPS will be more stable.

    I tried first with managed VPS on Cloudways and didn't like it. Next I tried Digital Ocean and my experience was pretty bad: dashboard wasn't working at all. Couldn't create a "droplet". Then I moved to Linode and it's great! The dashboard on Linode (Akamai) is super clear and easy to use.

    I created a 2vCPU 4GB Linode, which should comfortable run Kanji Koohii. Some years ago I would never have tried this because it felt overwhelming but now with ChatGPT and Gemini I'm a lot more confident. I created a full checklist of all the steps to go through like basic security, enabling Ubuntu Pro, firewall, virtual hosts, SSL etc.

    I picked a datacenter on the US West Coast (Los Angeles). I did some basic ping tests and in theory it should give the best compromise for US and Japan which are the top two countries for Kanji Koohii users. So compared to current server in central US the ping for Japan should be a little better like ~150 ms, should be lower for US. For EU it should be about the same than it is now anywhere from 200-350ms. If I picked a datacenter in Frankfurt for example of course EU users would have a very low ping, but US and Japan would be worse.

    Right now I setup all the basic security stuff including SSH, firewall, changing the default ports, etc. Now I am learning about setting up the SSL certificates for HTTPS.

    Next I will set up the database. It will run on mariadb instead of MySQL.

    So far, for the nerd in me at least, it's pretty exciting. Finally I can install useful tools like fzf (fuzzy search), mc (Midnight Commander) etc.

    For monitoring I think I will use Uptime Robot and maybe Netdata, so I can have health checks on a mobile app and be alerted if the site goes down.

    I will publish the full checklist of all the steps I took to set up the server so anyone experienced can review it and give me some tips if I forgot something!

  • 27 April 2026 Moving server?

    I signed up for Cloudways Flexible Managed VPS and will be experimenting with running the site on a server from Digital Ocean. In theory it should perform better than the shared hosting.

    I picked a San Francisco data center. I ran some tests on globalping.io and it seems like that would be the better compromise with US and Japan being the top two countries where users connect from. With SFO I have a ping of ~110 for Japan, sub-100 for US obviously, and ~150 for Germany. If I picked a datacenter in Europe the ping was ~230 for Japan. So it seems like West Coast US datacenter would be best.

    Server is 2GB RAM, 2 vCPU. That would be almost the same as I currently pay for shared hosting on HostGator. I have no idea if it will really perform better though. According to ChatGPT it will "crush" a shared hosting but I really don't know. I guess the plus side is with the Managed VPS I can scale up if necessary.

    I'm not experienced in backend / linux server kinda things at all, besides the simple Docker setup I have for development. So any and all advice is welcome, let me know if you have any tips or gotchas about moving to a VPS Managed server.

  • 11 April 2026 Investigating a login issue

    There is an intermittent issue with the Sign In form : sometimes you can be redirected to the landing page, while still logged out. Checking the "Remember me" option before clicking Sign In solves this.

    The fact that the redirect happens without showing an error message ("Incorrect username and/or password") means the authentication works, but the session somehow is lost after the redirect to the homepage.

    I spent two hours already trying to figure out why this happens but I have no idea. If anyone has a clue, let me know. Issue 389 on Github (backend is Symfony 1.4 / php).

  • 9 April 2026 Flashcard layout improvements

    Some tweaks today to the flashcard layout, and fixes.

    Japanese words in the prompt do not break. This one's a small improvement if you use Japanese text in the custom keywords (the flashcard prompt). In Japanese line breaks can occur between any two characters, but I thought it would be more readable to avoid wrapping in the middle of a Japanese word.

    review keyword wrapping

    Fix #357 Long keywords wrapping. Only if you use a long keyword, it could happen sometimes that the keyword is overlapped by the Edit Flashcard button (top right of the card). This no longer happens.

    Keyword overlapping kanji. In some instances a long keyword spanning 2-3 lines would overlap the kanji. Relatively uncommon, but this should no longer happen.

    Example word text scaling. Minor thing, the text scales down a little bit if the Japanese compound is long, so the compound and reading fits on one line.

  • 6 April 2026 Custom keywords support in the search box

    The Study search box now matches your custom keywords.

    Screenshot below shows two use cases: on the left a user translates the keywords in their language, on the right a user adds Japanese words to the keyword prompts.

    Search Custom Keywords

    If using Japanese in the keyword it may be a good idea to keep the english words so that you can easily search, otherwise you'll have to use Japanese input.

    This closes issue 384 opened yesterday by joliss.

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