Writing on software development, Laravel ecosystem, and the tech industry.

A collection of articles and snippets, presented in chronological order.

Stop Wasting Monitoring Quota: Block Malicious 404s with NGINX

Malicious bots were burning through my Laravel Nightwatch quota by hitting fake routes like /wp-login.php and /.env. Inspired by Michael Dyrynda’s approach using Cloudflare WAF, I built a portable NGINX blocklist that stops these 404s before they reach Laravel — no proxy required.