Persian Interfaces, RTL Layouts and the Solar Hijri Calendar
Sites aimed at Iranian visitors need Persian (Farsi) content written right to left, and a few details separate a polished site from an awkward one. Set dir="rtl" and lang="fa" on the html element, and use CSS logical properties so margins, padding and icons flip correctly without a separate stylesheet.
Persian uses some letters that Arabic does not, and also has its own preferred forms of yeh and keheh. If your database or search mixes the Arabic and Persian variants, searches will miss matches, so normalise text on input. Choose a font built for Persian, such as Vazirmatn, which handles the zero-width non-joiner correctly. Dates matter more than many developers expect: most Iranian users think in the Solar Hijri calendar, so show dates that way or alongside Gregorian ones. Libraries exist for PHP, JavaScript and Python that convert dates reliably. Persian digits are often preferred in body text, while forms should accept both.
Hardening Steps for a New Server in Tehran
A public IP attracts automated scans quickly, whatever country it is in. Spend the first half hour after delivery on security, before uploading any site files or databases.
Bring the operating system fully up to date and reboot if a new kernel was installed. Rather than working as root, add a personal account and grant it sudo. Copy your public key across, sign in with it from a fresh terminal, and only then turn off password logins in the SSH daemon. Moving SSH to a non-standard port reduces noise in the logs but is not real protection on its own. Turn on a default-deny firewall and open just the services you serve. Install fail2ban or CrowdSec to block repeated failures. If you run a control panel, keep it behind its own strong password and update it promptly. Note every change in a simple text file so future maintenance in Iran is easier to follow.
Keeping Backups Off the Machine and Testing Restores
Hardware is only one of many reasons data disappears. Mistyped commands, a faulty plugin update, ransomware or a forgotten renewal can all cost you a website. The safest assumption is that anything stored only on your Iranian instance could vanish, so keep regular copies elsewhere.
Start by deciding how much data you can afford to lose. If one day is acceptable, nightly backups are enough; for a busy shop, more frequent database dumps may be needed. Automate the process with a script run by cron, compress and encrypt the archive, and copy it to a second location you control. Keep several generations so you can step back before a problem that went unnoticed for a few days. Snapshots, where available, are handy just before major upgrades. Once a month, actually restore a backup onto a test machine and open the site. That rehearsal often reveals missing files or forgotten configuration before a real emergency.
Testing Ping and Routing to Iran From Your Own Location
Before committing a project to a location, measure how it performs for the people who will use it. Ping the sample IP shown on this page from your computer and note the average response time over a hundred packets, not just a few, because short tests can be misleading.
Run mtr or WinMTR to see each hop along the path and spot points where loss or delay appear. Results from inside the country and from abroad can differ a lot, since international routes take different paths than domestic ones. If your users are mainly in Iran, test from a domestic connection where possible. If you also serve visitors abroad, test from those regions too. A browser-based check helps: load a small file from the test address and time the download. Keep the numbers as a baseline for later. When you report a performance concern, clear before-and-after measurements help the support team investigate faster.
