Vivek Shukla

IndexNow Bulk URL Submit Using Curl

2026-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

IndexNow is a service which is used to inform search engines i.e. Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, about the content updates. This improves indexing. More info</a>.

IndexNow API supports upto 10,000 links submission in a day.

Make sure to have a randomly generated key c3755574c3ae4c259262854b0f241ec8.txt</code> at the root of your website. Generate key here</a> </blockquote>
🔗</a>Payload</h2> payload.json</code> { "host": "example.com", "key": "random-key", "keyLocation": "https://example.com/random-key.txt", "urlList": [ "https://example.com/blog" ] }</code></pre>🔗</a>Curl</h2> curl -v -X POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d @payload.json</code></pre>

PostgreSQL: Make Create/Drop Operations Infallible 2026-04-25T00:00:00+00:00 While creating a database table, column or index, if it already exist, postgres will throw the error and abort the whole operation. Using IF EXISTS</code> and IF NOT EXISTS</code> is a way to make them infallible. 🔗</a>Creating and Dropping Entire Tables</h3> Safe Create: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users ( id UUID PRIMARY KEY, email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL );</code></pre> Safe Drop: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS users;</code></pre>🔗</a>Adding and Removing Columns</h3> Safe Add Column: ALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS phone_number VARCHAR(20);</code></pre> Safe Drop Column: ALTER TABLE users DROP COLUMN IF EXISTS phone_number;</code></pre>🔗</a>Dropping Constraints (Easy)</h3> Safe Drop Constraint: ALTER TABLE users DROP CONSTRAINT IF EXISTS unique_email_constraint;</code></pre>🔗</a>Adding Constraints (The Tricky One)</h3> To make adding a constraint truly infallible, we have to use a tiny bit of PostgreSQL logic called a DO</code> blocIt checks the database records first before trying to add the rule. Safe Add Constraint (using a DO block): DO $$ BEGIN -- Check if the constraint name already exists IF NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM pg_constraint WHERE conname = 'unique_email_constraint' ) THEN -- If it does not exist, add it ALTER TABLE users ADD CONSTRAINT unique_email_constraint UNIQUE (email); END IF; END $$;</code></pre>🔗</a>Custom Types and Enums (Bonus)</h3> Safe Drop Type: DROP TYPE IF EXISTS job_status_enum;</code></pre> Safe Create Type: (Postgres does not have CREATE TYPE IF NOT EXISTS</code>, so we use another DO</code> block) DO $$ BEGIN IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM pg_type WHERE typname = 'job_status_enum') THEN CREATE TYPE job_status_enum AS ENUM ('submitted', 'pending', 'completed'); END IF; END $$;</code></pre> Meditation 2026-04-08T00:00:00+00:00 Meditation is not something that you do, you just allow it to happen. It just needs right ambience within you and enough practice. I think our inner nature itself is meditative and still, we just need to harness it. Make ourselves available to it. Don’t be or aspire to be a senior or experienced meditator, there is no such thing. Always sit with the mindset of a beginner, as if you are doing it for the first time. Do not chase or ponder upon any experience during meditation, discard it, do not talk or think about it, forget it. 🔗</a>Sit</h2> Sit cross legged, keep your spine comfortably erect, your palms open and resting on your legs, eyes closed, your tongue placed at the origin of upper teeth, head slightly upward than normal, put a smile on your face. Tell you mind to relax. Take 3 deep breaths with full stomach. 🔗</a>Embark</h2> Close you eyes: Feel the environment, feel the temperature on your skin. Listen to the sounds around you. Smell the odour around you. Feel the touch of your body to your asana. Feel your body from top to bottom. See the darkness of the closed eyes. Ask yourself, “Who am I”. See the thoughts that arise in you like wave, observe them untill they disappear, don’t engage, then feel the phenomena that keeps you alive, your breathing, just observe, let the body be. Just keep watching, even if your mind wants you to focus on your thoughts, just say not now, then come back to observe your breathing. To make things happen, focus 2025-09-10T00:00:00+00:00 There are a gazillion thing one may want to do, may be as a escape, may be as a distraction, may be just wishful thinking, just to avoid one thing that they should do. The more substantial thing you want to do, the more focus it will require. Don’t get distracted, to do something big you need to put your head down and work. Your goal must become center of your life, it must consume you. Either knowingly or unknowingly, people who have done something worthy in their life has put their focus on the goal. May be they thought it as passion or obsession or challenge, but they kept their focus. is it worth doing? </blockquote> When you pick something up, ask yourself, is it worth doing? Just a question in void, can clear a lot of things in you. May be you will fail, may be you will succeed, but if it’s worth doing, it should be done. It should be done for yourself. It’s important to pick some goals which are bigger than you, that is how you grow. UFW Cheat Sheet 2025-09-09T00:00:00+00:00 🔗</a>Check status</h2> sudo ufw status # or sudo ufw status verbose # or sudo ufw status numbered</code></pre>🔗</a>Delete value based on number:</h2> sudo ufw delete 5</code></pre>🔗</a>Allow port</h2> sudo ufw allow 22/tcp</code></pre>🔗</a>Deny port</h2> sudo ufw deny 80/tcp</code></pre>🔗</a>Allow from ip address or subnet</h2> sudo ufw allow from 10.22.96.0/20</code></pre>🔗</a>Allow from ip address to specific port</h2> sudo ufw allow from 10.22.96.0/20 proto tcp to any port 5432</code></pre>🔗</a>Disable ufw</h2> sudo ufw disable</code></pre>🔗</a>Block an ip address or subnet</h2> sudo ufw deny from 203.0.113.100</code></pre>🔗</a>Delete a rule</h2> sudo ufw delete allow from 203.0.113.101</code></pre>🔗</a>Allow incoming connection to a network interface</h2> sudo ufw allow in on eth0 from 203.0.113.102</code></pre> Setup Redis TLS With Self-signed Certificate 2025-09-08T00:00:00+00:00 This method is only recommended when connecting to redis server via local network. </blockquote> 🔗</a>Generate Server Certificates</h2> Generate Cert and Key file for self signed TLS, then move both these files to redis directory and set the proper permissions. Delete the Key file and copy the cert file to the client machine which will connect to the redis-server. cd ~ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -newkey rsa:2048 \ -keyout redis_tls.key -out redis_tls.crt \ -subj "/CN=YourOrg" sudo cp redis_tls.key redis_tls.crt /etc/redis/ && rm redis_tls.key sudo chmod 600 /etc/redis/redis_tls.key sudo chmod 644 /etc/redis/redis_tls.crt sudo chown redis:redis /etc/redis/redis_tls.key sudo chown redis:redis /etc/redis/redis_tls.crt</code></pre>🔗</a>Update Redis Configuration File</h2> This command will append the value to redis.conf</code> (redis configuration file). Make sure to update the password. It will disable the non-tls support and enable the tls connection at port 6379</code> with previously generated key and cert files. sudo tee -a /etc/redis/redis.conf << EOF bind * -::* port 0 tls-port 6379 tls-cert-file /etc/redis/redis_tls.crt tls-key-file /etc/redis/redis_tls.key tls-auth-clients no tls-prefer-server-ciphers yes requirepass YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE EOF</code></pre> Restart and enable redis sudo systemctl restart redis-server sudo systemctl enable redis-server</code></pre> Check status with sudo systemctl status redis-server</code></pre> If any error then check journal (log) sudo journalctl -u redis-server -f</code></pre>🔗</a>Add Redis Certificate to Trusted CA Store in Client Machine</h2> # Copy your certificate to CA certificates directory sudo mv redis_tls.crt /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/redis_tls.crt # Update CA certificates sudo update-ca-certificates</code></pre>🔗</a>Redis Connection URL</h2> Since we want to connect to redis using TLS connection, so the protocol in the url will be rediss</code> (with double “ss”). rediss://:<your_password_here>@<redis_server_ip>:6379/0#insecure</code></pre> Content Strategy For Indie Makers 2025-09-07T00:00:00+00:00 A new wave of indie makers is emerging. Developing with technology was never this easy and accessible. Every day new SaaS products are being launched. With this comes the problem that how one can capture the audience for their own product. Conventional method of finding and targeting keywords, going on backlink hunting is not that impactful since the advent of AI. Don’t get me wrong these are still important however not at the beginning. The number of people searching on Google is declining everyday and because of that even Google has put AI response first thing in the search, which reduces clicks on your website even more, even if it’s in Top 3 spot of search result. However there is also AI slop fatigue among people, wherever you see people are using AI to write their content and it’s not that hard to spot it. So it’s recommended to use AI for idea generation, reviewing the content and strategy. Having launched my own SaaS</a> and after researching quite a bit on marketing and content strategy. Based on my own journey and research, I’ve developed a content strategy that feels more sustainable. While these are just my thoughts, I’m already applying some of them and plan to fully commit to this approach. 🔗</a>Start at the start</h2> Marketing is transfer of enthusiasm - Jason Fried </blockquote> When you start any new project you are enthusiastic about it like it’s the best idea in the world which can change your life, use this enthusiasm to your advantage. Brainstorm content ideas, create the content, create the why of your idea/product. Find community around your problem on Reddit, X or Bluesky, engage with them. One of the biggest mistake first time indie maker do (even I did) is that I’ll get on marketing and content creation after I’m done with the development of my product. This is the worst thing you can do to your product and yourself. Content creation must go on hand in hand with your development work from the day one. I would first launch my website with wait-list form to capture visitor’s email. This will be put on all pages. For me the time split between Development and Content creation would be: At the start: 80% Development and 20% content. When development is nearing completion: 50% Development and 50% Content After launching the product: Well if your product is really viral or acquired good enough customer base then you should continue with 20% content creation and 80% development since you will be getting a lot of feedback, bug report and feature request. If product is not successful as it was thought it would be then do 80% content creation and 20% development until you reach desired user base. 🔗</a>Create content around your product</h2> It’s a good strategy to start creating content about basic stuff around your product (or service), even glossary stuff like explaining related terms, use cases, review of the current situation, etc. Suppose your product is screen recorder app: start with why this app, what are it’s features that sets it apart</li> how to use it, give multiple use cases</li> how it differs from existing products, cover each of the competition compared to which your product is better</li> </ul> 🔗</a>Go Big with Viral-Worthy Content</h2> After covering all basics about your product, now you need to work on attention grabbing stuff. It could be either video or article, whichever suits your niche, however doing both would be encouraged. Create Mr. Beast of content, spend 2 weeks, 4 weeks or even 8 weeks, but create something that truly grabs people’s attention. It can be research, experiment or entertaining stuff, but stick to your niche. 🔗</a>Don’t Sell, Rather Inform</h2> I’ve shown interests on products where developer is not trying to sell you the stuff, rather informing you, helping you. Be helpful, this creates a good will, even if people do not buy your product, they might share it with someone else. 🔗</a>Engage</h2> Be real. I would share my journey as a person. For example: How I started</li> How is it going</li> Any important milestone reached</li> </ul> Share your stories, share your number like profit, loss, investment, etc. This Blog 2025-09-06T00:00:00+00:00 This post is not going to be very technical. I am just going to talk about my thought process behind implementing and needing various features this blog has. In a nutshell, a blog is just a log of user’s life that is available over the internet. There are various blog service from free to paid. Even twitter (now X) is a blogging (micro blogging) platform. This blog is build with Zola</a>, which is SSG (Static Site Generator), which parses Mardown file to generate HTML pages, which you can host anywhere, even for free, however you’ve to be bit technical. In a SSG there is no database, you just have your markdown files and HTML templates, you can store it anywhere, like me most prefer to use version control system like GitHub to store the blog data. In the past I have used all sorts of hosting method. I started with Blogspot, which is free blogging service by Google, it’s good but limited. Then I moved on to Wordpress for a good few years, however I didn’t like sometimes I had to be bit involved to manage it. It’s PHP based software and there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to managing it. And it’s certainly not free. Then I heard about SSG, at first I was dismissive of it, however after some years I came along and moved to Hugo, another SSG which is very popular, one of the top choices for a lot of people. Hugo was good however I didn’t like it’s templating syntax, to me it reads very weird. At some point I was working with Sveltekit for my work needs, so I though let’s give Sveltekit try since we can generate static sites with Sveltekit as well. I made a blog which also uses markdown to parse and serve the blog. After using this for around a year I moved to Zola (current blog) because the fact that Svelte and Sveltekit are frontend javascript framework, so they change a lot. Just moving from Svelte 4 to 5 was a big change. After discovering Zola (another SSG) and reading up on it’s docs and other people’s blog, Zola clicked with me because of it’s very intuitive template syntax (I come from Django so!!). So I built this blog with my bare hand from the scratch. Some of the features of Zola: Generates static HTML</li> Built-in syntax highlighting</li> Load data from files like csv, json</li> Also can load data from remote urls</li> Sitemap generator</li> RSS generator</li> Very poweful concept of Section and Page</li> Highly customizable</li> </ul> After going through all this blogging of around 10 years, I knew a few things I needed. This time I just wanted to write (posts) and so I wanted to keep simple UI but behind the scene all the features one might need. A brief on all the features this blog has: SEO Automatic handling of meta tags</li> schema generation for structured data</li> OG (Opengraph) tags</li> </ul> </li> Post / Article unlisted: makes post invisible in listings, only accessible via link</li> noindex: marks post to be not indexed by search engines</li> posted dated posts: set a later date for post to be published</li> tags: add tags to post around relevant topic</li> </ul> </li> </ul> I’ve been very happy with Zola. It does not get in the way and let me just write now. For long I have not been writing, but now I’ve decided to continue writing. Cloud Init Script to Set-up Server 2025-09-05T00:00:00+00:00 Add this script to Cloud-init field while provisioning your VPS. Most cloud providers support this. This script will do following stuff: disable the root user</li> disable password authentication for SSH</li> update and upgrade ubuntu packages</li> create a new user named “ubuntu” add given public SSH key as authorized_key</code> for the user</li> Install and setup: Ufw: a firewall with open ports 22, 80 and 443</li> fail2ban: to protect against brute-force login attempt</li> unattended-upgrades: to upgrade ubuntu packages</li> docker</li> </ul> </li> </ul> #cloud-config disable_root: true ssh_pwauth: false package_update: true package_upgrade: true timezone: Etc/UTC system_info: default_user: ssh_authorized_keys: [] lock_passwd: true packages: - ufw - fail2ban - unattended-upgrades runcmd: - echo $(date) > /start - passwd -l root - sed -i 's/^PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config - systemctl restart sshd - ufw default deny incoming - ufw default allow outgoing - ufw allow 22/tcp - ufw allow 80/tcp - ufw allow 443/tcp - ufw --force enable - systemctl enable fail2ban - systemctl start fail2ban - unattended-upgrade - curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh - groupadd docker - usermod -aG docker ubuntu - echo $(date) > /end users: - name: ubuntu lock_passwd: true ssh_authorized_keys: - YOUR_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL groups: sudo shell: /bin/bash</code></pre> Deploy Systemd Service Behind Nginx with TLS 2025-09-04T00:00:00+00:00 🔗</a>Systemd Service</h2> sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/YOUR_SERVICE_NAME.service << 'EOF' [Unit] Description=YOUR_SERVICE_NAME After=network.target [Service] ExecStart=/executable/location WorkingDirectory=/dir/where/program/can/read-write/data Restart=on-failure RestartSec=5s StartLimitIntervalSec=300 StartLimitBurst=5 User=ubuntu Group=ubuntu [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target EOF</code></pre> Start command: sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable YOUR_SERVICE_NAME sudo systemctl start YOUR_SERVICE_NAME</code></pre> Other commands: # see logs sudo journalctl -u YOUR_SERVICE_NAME -f # restart sudo systemctl restart YOUR_SERVICE_NAME # when service file is updated sudo systemctl daemon-reload</code></pre>🔗</a>Nginx Reverse Proxy</h2> sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/YOUR_DOMAIN << 'EOF' map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade { default upgrade; '' close; } upstream server_list { server localhost:8000; keepalive 32; } server { listen 80; # IPv4 listen [::]:80; # IPv6 server_name YOUR_DOMAIN; # Hide server information headers server_tokens off; # Enable gzip compression gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_vary on; gzip_proxied any; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_buffers 16 8k; gzip_min_length 1024; gzip_types application/atom+xml application/geo+json application/javascript application/x-javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/eot font/otf font/ttf image/svg+xml text/css text/javascript text/plain text/xml; # Buffer size optimization client_body_buffer_size 32k; client_header_buffer_size 2k; client_max_body_size 10M; large_client_header_buffers 4 2k; # Timeouts client_body_timeout 20; client_header_timeout 20; keepalive_timeout 65; send_timeout 20; # Proxy settings location / { include proxy_params; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade; proxy_redirect off; proxy_buffering on; proxy_buffer_size 16k; proxy_buffers 8 16k; proxy_pass http://server_list; # Additional proxy timeouts proxy_connect_timeout 60s; proxy_send_timeout 120s; proxy_read_timeout 120s; } # Security headers add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always; add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always; } EOF</code></pre> Create Symlink sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/YOUR_DOMAIN /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/</code></pre> Checks Nginx configuration sudo nginx -t</code></pre> Restart Nginx sudo systemctl restart nginx</code></pre>🔗</a>Letsencrypt SSL</h2> Installing certbot</code> to install TLS certificate sudo apt remove certbot sudo snap install core; sudo snap refresh core sudo snap install --classic certbot sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot sudo certbot --nginx -d YOUR_DOMAIN</code></pre>

🔗</a>Delete a rule</h2>
`sudo</span> ufw delete allow from</span> 203.0.113.101</span></span></code></pre>`
🔗</a>Allow incoming connection to a network interface</h2>
`sudo</span> ufw allow in on eth0 from</span> 203.0.113.102</span></span></code></pre>`

🔗</a>Allow incoming connection to a network interface</h2>
`sudo</span> ufw allow in on eth0 from</span> 203.0.113.102</span></span></code></pre>`

🔗</a>Redis Connection URL</h2>
Since we want to connect to redis using TLS connection, so the protocol in the url will be `rediss</code> (with double “ss”).</p>`
`rediss://:<your_password_here>@<redis_server_ip>:6379/0#insecure</span></span></code></pre>`

🔗</a>Engage</h2>
Be real. I would share my journey as a person. For example:</p>

How I started</li>
How is it going</li>
Any important milestone reached</li> </ul>
Share your stories, share your number like profit, loss, investment, etc.</p>

Vivek Shukla

IndexNow Bulk URL Submit Using Curl

🔗</a>Curl</h2>
`curl</span> -v -X</span> POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow</span> -H</span> "Content-Type: application/json"</span> -d</span> @payload.json</span></span></code></pre>`

PostgreSQL: Make Create/Drop Operations Infallible

Meditation

To make things happen, focus

UFW Cheat Sheet

Setup Redis TLS With Self-signed Certificate

Content Strategy For Indie Makers

This Blog

Cloud Init Script to Set-up Server

Deploy Systemd Service Behind Nginx with TLS