Greetings, oh destitute ones, and welcome to the special “recession
edition” of the DreamHost newsletter, circa November 2008! (Circa means
“Give or take two weeks.”)

I’m sure you’ll understand that in these trying economic times, we’ve
had to cut back a little on our newsletteryness. It’s just hard to
justify all the bits (and in some cases even bytes) that would have been
wasted on what is an entirely frivolous endeavor.

Don’t worry, I’m sure once OUR federal aid package comes through, we’ll
once again be able to put out a newsletter of the quality and verbosity
that you’ve grown accustomed to. I just hate letting all you good people
down, especially in this, your just about darkest hour.

I can assure you that this lack of substantive newsletter content can
wholly be blamed on external forces beyond our control. In no way, shape
or form should those actually responsible for creating the content be
held actually responsible.

########################################################################
1.  New.. no more Gift Certificates!

One way we at DreamHost came up with to help you deal with the current
lean times, especially during the holiday season, was simple and dead
obvious: Stop offering DreamHost Gift Certificates!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.gc

There, you no longer have to worry about all that green-ola you were
going to blow on THAT stocking stuffer! Let your stupid friends and
family use their OWN cash on hosting we say, BAH HUMBUG!

But don’t worry, we’re not TOTAL grinches… any existing gift
certificates will continue to work indefinitely. We’re just not allowing
the purchase of any NEW ones.

If you were REALLY dead-set on giving the gift of hosting this year,
might I recommend you just make your own cutesy/crafty/loving “gift
certificate” instead? Just put something like “I OWZ U DOM4INZ, LULZ!!!”
and a picture of a kitten barfing on it.

That’s what I’ve been doing for years.

########################################################################
2.  New.. IPv6 AAAA Records!

Now that the specter of deflation is lingering over us all, it’s nice to
know there are some places where 300% inflation is still the norm: DNS
records!

Of course, 300% is but the tiniest pimple on a blue whale’s bottom
compared to the inflation in IP addresses to be (eventually) brought
forward by IPv6:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

Yep, the total number of IPs will explode from 2^32 to 2^128; more than
seventy nine billion billion billion times! Beat that, Zimbabwe!

Oh yeah, what I meant by 300% inflation in DNS records is that where we
once had A records for IP, IPv6 has AAAA records! And, DreamHost now
supports adding those records through our DNS management system at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

(Just click “DNS” under the appropriate domain.)

What this means exactly, I’m not really sure. But hey, a few people have
asked for it, and that’s what we do best around here at DreamHost, cater
to the whims of the few!

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3.  New.. MySQL Query Cache Enabled!

Another thing a few people whimmed about recently, and these must be
people with more money than you or me, or else they’d be too occupied
trying to find a pile of compost to live in to worry about such
trivialities, is if we could please enable the Query Cache on our MySQL
servers… see:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/query-cache-how.html

Well, we tested it for a little bit, and it seemed to have no major
effect (either way) on stability, so sure, whatever, we enabled it!

In fact, we just needed to add two entries to an internal database. It
was the least we could do.

Now, it’ll be a while before the Query Cache is actually *running* on
every single MySQL instance. Because they need to be restarted to enable
it, but we felt it wasn’t important enough to warrant the interruption.

But, servers, like the stock market, eventually crash.. so someday every
MySQL will have Query Cache enabled, completely naturally!

########################################################################
4.  New.. PS Full Billing History!

If ever there were an industry in need of more oversight and
transparency, it’s web hosting. Forget CDSes and hedge funds and sub-
prime mortgages.. I’m talking domain squatting and overselling and over-
billing!

Well, leave it to DREAMHOST to self-regulate! And, in the most
superficial way possible.

At the request of a few of our customers, you can now see your ENTIRE
history of charges for your DreamHost PS(es)… not JUST the current
billing cycle, over at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.usage

Super-fantastic! Now the invisible hand can once again work its magic,
unfettered by the fat finger.

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5.  DHSOTM

Is it any surprise in times like these that the winner of the November
DreamHost Site of the Month contest is not a fancy-shmancy flash and
mirrors vacuous portfolio site?

Yes; a huge surprise.

In fact, this month’s winner (as voted by you, Happy DreamHosters) is:

http://www.wisconsinrivers.org/

Which, despite the confusing domain name, is apparently the official
site for the River Alliance of Wisconsin.

Apparently, the tide has turned for DHSOTM submitters with not the
greatest design and flash skills. Perhaps YOU should take advantage and
submit YOUR site today?

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

########################################################################

(Disclaimer: Due to DreamHost newsletter lead time restrictions, this
newsletter you are now receiving had to be written before the US
Election results were clear.)

Hey there, fellow voting U.S. citizens and lazies/minors/foreigners
alike, and welcome to the October 2008 edition of the DreamHost
Newsletter… specifically held back until November 4th to coincide with
the national election!

And what a *historic* national election it was! Can you believe it? After
literally HUNDREDS of years in the making, the one thing nobody ever
believed could happen, FINALLY did. America bucked the odds yayed the
nay-sayers, and at long, long last, did what would have been UNTHINKABLE
no less than a decade ago.

Congratulations on your presidential victory, Mr. Ralph Nader!

Apparently dumping that green party really did the trick! And now, the
world better WATCH OUT as President Nader starts to implement his vision
to open up the presidential debates and impeach Bush and Cheney!

########################################################################
1.  New.. DomainKeys (DKIM)!

Well, I can’t say I voted for Nader, but I suppose there could have been
worse outcomes. I for one, am glad Obama didn’t win.. because I would
have REALLY been kicking myself for not stealing his Senate nameplate
when I had the chance back in 2005!

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/02/27/people-power/

Now, here’s something else I’d REALLY be kicking myself for, if I was a
spammer that is.. DomainKeys!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys

http://www.dkim.org/

It’s a way, through a combination of dns and signing outgoing email, to
prove that an email with your “from” address on it is _actually_ from
you.

Which may not seem like a super useful thing, except that it can help a
lot in the fight against spam with forged headers.. which in turn should
result in less of DreamHost (and therefore *you*) getting blocked by
other mail servers for spam they didn’t commit!

(Note, we are doing nothing in regards to INCOMING email.)

For now, we’re just adding the dns entries to everybody’s domains.. in
the near future we’ll actually begin signing emails as well! It’s kind
of like a verified vote audit trail! Diebold will be helping us!

########################################################################
2.  New.. Drupal 6.6 and Wordpress 2.6.3!

Besides U.S. President v43.0, there’s some other new versions of things
today (well, whatever day this newsletter is referring to)! For example,

Our one-click install of Wordpress (easy and advanced) has been upgraded
to 2.6.3, and our Drupal one-click (it’s only easy still) has been
upgraded to 6.6.

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer

And as long as we’re talking about cool new stuff, here’s something cool
AND new you can do.. IF you’re using “m#######” to log in in your email
client, you NEED to change it to your full email address instead, a la
“user@domain.com” by January 1st, 2009!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I recommend just going down to
your local polling place and asking anybody hanging around, asking you
to vote for or against somebody or something… those people are
generally really really smart!

########################################################################
3.  New.. Rsync and SCP for your Backup User!

And, now that Ralph Nader is our new commander-in-chief, I’m sure he’ll
immediately do the number one hot-button issue on every voter’s mind:

Allowing rsync and scp (not just ftp and sftp) for the 50GB free backup
user on people’s DreamHost accounts!

Oh wait. Too late.

Cause we already DID THAT:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=users.backup

Boom!

And also notice.. the server you connect to for your backups has changed
to simply: “backup.dreamhost.com” .. not backup2/3/4/etc… BOOM!!!!!!!!

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4.  New.. PS up to 4GB, plus RAID 10!

There were some articles about all these web sites getting ready for the
“election crush” by beefing up their servers and adding load balancers
and what not.

Well, we’d sure hate for YOU to be unprepared, which is why we’re now
upping the max resource levels available on our DreamHost P.S. service:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

From 2300MB to 4000MB! Amazing! And all you have to do is slide that
slider at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.usage

to get there!

I’m sure Ralph Nader’s campaign website itself would be fine on a
DreamHost P.S. with 4GB of ram!

But wait, there’s more! We’re also starting to do our newest PS servers
as RAID 10 instead of RAID 6, which should offer about 150% better IO
performance I’ve heard (because 10 is about 150% better than 6)! We’ll
be moving all existing PSes (MySQL PS were already raid 10) to this
configuration in the upcoming months. The transition should be more or
less seamless for you, apart from one thing.. your PS name will change
to the format ps####.

I’m so sorry, but for various (mysterious) reasons, we just can’t offer
custom naming of your PS any more! Now would be a good time to make sure
you’re referring to your server just by your own domain name always and
not the server name that you shouldn’t have been using in the first
place!

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5.  New.. Charities!

Just in case the economy has been treating you especially well the last
few months, I’d like to remind you that DreamHost will always match any
donation you make to our two featured charities via our web panel at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.charity

For the last three months we raised $513 (and then matched it) for the
Red Cross and $222.50 (and then matched it) for edurelief!

This time, we’ve got Habitat For Humanity:

http://www.habitat.org/

And the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation:

http://www.komen.org/

Both of which probably deserve and need your contribution WAY more than
any presidential candidate.

Except for maybe Bob Barr. Please, if you were thinking of contributing
to Bob Barr, do that instead. He’s way way WAY needier.

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6.  DHSOTM

In the “spirit” of Halloween, it looks like this months’ DreamHost Site
of the Month winner is “Old BOO Kart”, a website I assume is dedicated
to the ghost levels in Super Mario Kart:

http://www.oldbookart.com/

They have my vote! Now, in the “vote” of Election day, why not submit
your own site and/or vote on others’ over at the DHSOTM page:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Man, every four years this section practically writes itself!

########################################################################

Ugh, here it is, practically mid-October, and I’m still not *feelin* the
DreamHost September Newsletter, 2008 edition. If it’s anything like a
usual month, I’m going to assume you guys aren’t feeling it either. So,
maybe we should just call the whole thing off?

Hmm, I guess you can probably tell by the all the other words below this
that that isn’t going to happen. Nah, I guess we all have a duty to each
other to write and read this thing, no matter how feeling-ly towards
each other we are feeling. So, I suppose we should just plow on through
and choke down whatever sorry excuses for “features” I whipped up in the
last 24 hours.

Let’s get this thing over with.

########################################################################
1.  New! System-wide Upgrades!

What a lovely day today is! The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s
beautiful and so are you! Nothing is going to change my world today,
you’d have to be crazy to be in a funk with an environment like this!

Which is why we’re doing our part even more to help keep it that way.
You might already know about our carbon offsets and what-not:

http://www.dreamhost.com/aboutus-green.html

But the world is NOT ENOUGH! So, as I detailed in this blog post:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/10/01/lets-save-our-environment-harder/

We will, over the next year or so, be transitioning ALL customers to new
servers (with local disk) that should result in greater than 50% cost er
energy savings in our data center!

Happy, Happy, Year!

########################################################################
2.  Volunteer to Get Upgraded First!

Pshaw. That whole upgrade plan sounds like a hell-hole death-march of
busywork and problems, problems, problems. Haven’t we ever heard of “If
it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” I only know one thing, and that’s that
no good can come of this.

If you’ve got a suicidal bent, and can easily be bought because you have
no principals, we’ve got an offer for you here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts

If you actually VOLUNTEER to be one of the first moved to the new system
your account will be “upgraded” to unlimited disk and bandwidth, forever.
Of course, it’s not like you’ll use it, and it’s of course subject to our
“unlimited” policy. If you do decide to do it, you’d be a damn fool to
not read the caveats listed there and *follow them*.

Damned fool if you do, gonna get moved eventually anyway if you don’t.

########################################################################
3.  New! Quarantined Mail via IMAP!

There’s NOTHING that makes my day MORE than us FINALLY finishing a
feature that’s been one of the most popular suggestions for pretty close
to a DECADE!!!! :) :) :) :) :)!!!!!!

Yes. It’s TRUE!! You can finally access your junkmail quarantine folder
via your IMAP client!!! To enable this, just log into webmail at:

http://webmail.dreamhost.com/ or http://webmail.yourdomain.com/

and click “junkmail” there on the left, then “settings”, then put in a
folder name for your spam!

You can also of course use:

http://mailboxes.domain.com/

(The place for individual mailbox users to manage their own settings.)
And click “junkmail settings” to do the same thing!

Today is already so BEAUTIFUL… and now THIS?!! Happy happy joy joy!

########################################################################
4.  New! Webmail Upgraded to 1.4.15!

Of course, putting a ribbon on a turd doesn’t stop it being a turd.

We’ve tried upgrading squirrelmail (our open source webmail software) to
version 1.4.15 recently to see how big a ribbon they put on it:

http://webmail.dreamhost.com/ or http://webmail.yourdomain.com/

and as far as I can see, the ribbon, it does nothing.

What a waste of time that was. No obvious changes or benefits at all.

########################################################################
5.  DHSOTM

Wheeeee a contest! It’s my perennial (permonthly?) favorite section of
the newsletter, the DreamHost Site of the Month contest! And I’m
ESPECIALLY ECSTATIC this month, because we have NEVER had such a GLORIOUS
winner:

http://www.tonyamoore.com/

She’s a creative writing enthusiast with a flash-free home page, he’s a
newsletter writer with a distinctly bi-polar nature… could it last?!

Of COURSE it could, you’ve just got to think POSITIVE! And, while you’re
at it, you should DEFINITELY, POSITIVELY submit your own site:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

I just KNOW with a wonderful site like yours, you’ll win it in a
chipmunk’s heart beat!

########################################################################

Man, I was *sooo* close to just making this newsletter a combined August
September one (the DreamHost Saugust Newsletter), seeing as how this has
GOT to be the latest I’ve EVER been in sending a newsletter (not to
mention probably the first time on a SATURDAY). But then I thought, “No,
why should YOU poor people suffer for MY languor?”

But, I have a good excuse. I was waiting for Apple to approve my AWESOME
iPhone app:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/09/12/arguing-on-the-internet/

Read it for ALL the exciting details, and even some SPOILERS for the
rest of this newsletter! Also, take the time to vote for us as the BEST
corporate blog in the world; you know it’s true, and you know we only
need four more votes to clinch it. You don’t want to force me to sign up
for even MORE fake blogger’s choice award accounts, right?

########################################################################
1.  New… 50GB Free Personal Backups!

I’ve noticed my newsletters seem to have less and less themes recently.

Well, except for last month, I guess that had the Olympic theme. I guess
by recently, I mean really recently; like really, REALLY recently. Like,
just this newsletter.

In keeping with my no-theme theme, uh oh, I think I just made a destroy-
the-universe-LHC-style self-contradiction, here’s a new feature that
pretty much has nothing to do with anything I said in the introduction!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=users.backup

Now, you know how we give out a LOT of disk space with our hosting? Well
technically that space is only supposed to be used for your _actual_ web
site (and email / database stuff) .. not as an online backup for your
music, pictures, videos, other servers, etc!

Well, just like every other web host does, we’ve been sort of cracking
down on that some lately, and it seems to catch some people by surprise!
Nobody likes being surprised, especially in the shower, which is where
we typically brought it up, and so now we offer a solution:

You CAN use 50GB of your disk space for backups now! The only caveat is,
it’s a separate ftp (or sftp) user on a separate server and it can’t
serve any web pages. There are also NO BACKUPS kept of THESE backups
(they should already BE your backups, not your only copy), and if you go
over 50GB, extra space is only 10 cents a GB a month (a.k.a. cheap)!

########################################################################
2.  New… First week of DreamHost PS free!

This section IS sort of keeping with the theme of the newsletter, if
that theme is “the most recent blog post at blog.dreamhost.com,” that is!

So, we noticed one of the biggest questions people had about signing up
for a DreamHost PS (our neat-o/hassle-free/even MORE flexible virtual
private server offering) was that they didn’t KNOW how much memory to
choose when they signed up:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

And the truth was, neither did we. How could we, we’re idiots!

But what we told people was, don’t worry, just pick a level and then
once you’re moved over you’ll see if it was too much or too little, and
you’ll only be charged a few cents during the time you figure it out.

People didn’t like that though, because these days you can buy a lot of
gas with just a few cents, and it WAS a pretty lame solution.

And then, last week: _total_ brain storm! What if we just gave everybody
the MAX memory possible for FREE for the first week of their DreamHost
PS, and then at the end of the week AUTOMATICALLY adjusted it to the
right level for them (unless they’d already manually adjusted it, in
which case we’d leave it alone)?!

ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED.

So that’s exactly what we’ve now done!

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3.  New… https://demo.dreamhost.com/!

And yet another biggest question people have before signing up for us AT
ALL, is “Do you guys have cpanel?” And our answer was always, “WHAYEAH!?”

Well, now our answer can be, “YES, WE DO!”

https://demo.dreamhost.com/

If that doesn’t look like cpanel to you, it’s because I was just kidding.

No, we don’t offer cpanel and no, we never will, not because it sucks,
necessarily, but we like to say so. Mostly it’s because we already wrote
our own and we don’t have to pay for it. Not to mention it is 100% the
best web panel in the world, and now we can prove it to people BEFORE
they plunk down their cold hard credit card digits.

And that should hopefully mean a better chance for YOU to get REWARDS
when you send somebody our way:

http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-rewards.html

And don’t worry, even though it LOOKS like you can do absolutely
_everything_ in our demo panel, it’s all going to a completely separate
database and so nothing ever ACTUALLY happens. Total brain storm.

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4.  New… Getting SSL certs is easier!

Okay, I’m starting to run out of features here, but I like having around
five, so:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

Did you know you could manage your domains at our web panel? NICE.

More specifically, we’ve now integrated our panel with GeoTrust’s API
for creating/renewing SSL certs with them, so if you get a certificate
from us, it’s no more emailing back and forth and linking around, and
all that gw bush league stuff. It just works how you’d sort of expect it
to based on how the rest of our panel works. All in one nice place, like
a house by a lake in the country.

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5.  Remember: mod_fcgid, mod_php, and xcache saves memory!

Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Dallas says we currently use
mod_fastcgi for our FastCGI option you might see when you edit or add a
domain at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

BUT, on DreamHost PS NOW, and someday SOON on “regular” DreamHosting,
we’re using mod_fcgid instead.. which is the same thing but is supposed
to work better overall and is still being actively developed.

PLUS.. if you’re on DreamHost PS and turn on PHP xcache to go along with
it:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.settings

“Holy CRAP is it good!” says Dallas. “For example, one guy’s DreamHost
PS went from a load of 20 to *1* as soon as all his dynamic PHP content
started getting handled with mod_fcgid and xcache.”

There’s mod_php in those settings too, which also works so goooood, but
doesn’t run your php as your own user and is maybe a little bit weirder
about a couple of things.

(If you’re doing Ruby on Rails, of course still use Passenger!)

########################################################################
6.  DHSOTM

This is a definite first for a DreamHost Site of the Month winner… a
personal blog/home page site that doesn’t use flash won?!

http://www.chrisstreeter.com/

I’m almost thinking he must have done a little ballot-stuffing, but alas,
I can find no evidence of it, and so I believe his clean layout, nifty
Google maps integration, and nice random rotation of header pics won the
day!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Is where to go to win the tomorrow!

########################################################################

Dun DUN dun dun dun dun dun, DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun du-du-du-dun!

Hello, and welcome to the July 2008 non-stop simulcast of the 116th
writing of the DreamHost Newsletter games: broadcast directly via email
and wiki readership to over 200,000 Happy DreamHost Spectators!

You’d better get used to that music NOW, because you’re going to hear a
lot more of it for the next two and a half weeks! That’s right, it’s the
Olympics… of WEB HOSTING, and to celebrate, we’re building a new $100,
000,000,000,000 data center the size of Cheng Du, in the shape of my
head/a giant squirrel.

I’ll also be playing ping pong every day all day, and awarding myself a
record nine gold medals in awesomeness.

########################################################################
1.  Big Junkmail Changes!

I predict the Olympics of Web Hosting will become the most-watched web
hosting sporting event of all time. It will bring about global harmony
among all web hosts, including even those smallest of hosts who can only
afford to send one employee (probably to compete in one of the more
obscure sports like amavis configuration munging).

Sadly, they might as well keep their unpacked bags at home, saving
themselves $25 and a whole lot of painful, painful heartache. Because
only one place is bringing home the gold in amavis configuration munging,
and you probably have an pretty good idea who writes their newsletter.

In case you’re from China, amavis is what’s responsible for our junkmail
filtering, and we recently made some changes so you can now manage your
preferences (what level of spamminess you’d like messages tagged/what
level you’d like them quarantined) from our web panel directly at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=mail.junk

You can also add blacklisted and whitelisted email addresses from there,
PLUS do all of the above on a domain-wide basis too!

Your email users can still manage their spam quarantine from webmail:

http://webmail.YOURDOMAIN.COM/

But they can ALSO do it from the mailbox-management area that I bet you
didn’t even know we had at:

http://mailboxes.YOURDOMAIN.COM/

Yes, there’s a lot you don’t know about DreamHost. A lot. Lot. T. Like
the fact that a lot of our employees/competitors aren’t even 15 yet. Nor
are they actually female. SHHHH.

########################################################################
2.  One Click Entire Account Backups… Updated!

Remember in the last Web Hosting Olypics of Web Hosting when CI Host got
disqualified for doping? Ha, that was hilarious! Especially when they
had to give back their half gold medal (it was a tie with Lunarpages) in
Synchronized Server Rebooting.

With such a great memory, you must also remember how last newsletter I
mentioned our new “Entire Account Backup” feature we have here?

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.backup

Well, I’m pleased to say after weeks of intensive training, the backup
feature is “back up” and even WORKING! At such an advanced age, it’s no
surprise that there are some new limits to her might (no dbs or users >
4GB will be backed up), but she’s also developed some wily new
techniques that come only with age (the backup is password protected).

How will this new Entire Account Backup feature fare in the Olympics of
Web Hosting? Well, it couldn’t possibly do any worse than poor old Remap
Sub-directory in 2004.

########################################################################
3.  Shnazzy New DreamHost.com… With PS!

Everybody in the international community knows that in preparation of
the Olympics of Web Hosting we built the $100,000,000,000,000 Josh Jones
Squirrel Head Memorial Data Center, but far fewer know that we ALSO redid
our main website at a cost of only $13.52!

http://www.dreamhost.com/

Hate it or love it, you’ve got to admit it is new. And we’re now a shoe-
in to win the Freestyle Website Photos competition, aesthetics be damned!

You may have noticed we’ve also now got DreamHost PS right there on the
front page! I know, not TOO exciting for you existing customers, but our
new signup form at:

https://signup.dreamhost.com/

is SO cool, I recommend you cancel and sign up again just to use it!

Or at least refer a friend and watch over their shoulder. Naked.

########################################################################
4.  Upgrade All One-Clicks In… One Click!

If you’ve got a lot of our Advanced one clicks set up over at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer

you probably feel like a regular decathlete when it’s time to one-click
upgrade each and every one of them! Sure, it’s just one-click each, but
that can still be like: one-click, one-click, one-click, one-click, one-
click, one-click, one-click… like SEVEN one-clicks!

NOT ANYMORE.

Now there’s a button at the bottom that makes upgrading ALL your one-
clicks to the newest version just…. one-click! It almost feels a bit
scary to have a button like that. But really, it should work. Fine. If
you’re brave. And bold. And gold.

########################################################################
5.  New Charities!

With all those precious me[dt]als we’ll soon be toting around, it’s no
wonder we can afford to be so charitable and MATCH any donations you
Happy DreamHost Spectators make to one of our two featured charities at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.charity

The last time it was SPCA-LA (the Society for the Possible Cruelty to
Animals) and Communities in School, and we raised $732.03 and $423.56
respectively, and then matched it, respectively. Reeeespect.

This time, let’s see if we can set a new Olympics of Web Hosting record
and get a zillion billion donations for the Red Cross International
Relief Fund and Edurelief (books for Mongol school children) before
October!

With the attention of the entire international community focused on us
for the Olympics of Web Hosting, now is our chance to raise awareness as
never before for the plight of that international community!

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6.  DHSOTM

There are bound to be some protests for this month’s ceremonial
unveiling of this month’s DreamHost Site of the Month winner, this month.

You see, there is a bubbling controversy about DreamHost’s website-rights
record when it comes to this contest. Some claim that in the past sites
have been brutally teased, witheld the award for no good reason, and even
unfairly detained with no award for weeks.

Nevertheless, the DHSOTM party will continue, stronger than ever, more
than happy to quash any and all dissent, for the good of the dissenters!

This month is no exception. I happily provide to you:

http://www.whitneyandchristopher.com/

The “official” winner of the DreamHost Site of the Month for July, 2008!

It’s a very nice wedding site for what I’m sure was a very nice wedding
in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.!! Focus on THAT, international community! The
wedding was in July, so how perfect to win the DHSOTM in the same month.

I hope the marriage is still going strong. And I hope it continues that
way when hundreds of thousands of Internet weirdos bombard their RSVP
form with naughty names like “Amanda Hugankiss” all thanks to a misguided
notion by Christopher to submit his contest for DHSOTM.

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Is the place to go see the site who actually had a higher average vote
this month but still didn’t win. Thank you, Russian judges!

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Boy, these things just never ever ever ever stop do they. Not as long as
I still have breath in my lungs and/or a stake in this company. So, here
is this month’s June 2008 Happy DreamHost Newsletter, a little late this
time, UNUSUALLY so.

I would have had it out in June itself, except I was so busy talking on
my cell phone while driving without a hands-free device that I could
never find the time. Thank goodness California passed that law outlawing
that on July 1st! Now, I can concentrate on just writing this newsletter
while driving.

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1.  New Easy One-Click: MediaWiki!

The other DRIVING force behind this newsletter being late, was of course
that we had no new features to announce. So, at the last second on our
way into work this morning in fact, we whipped up another easy 1-click,
this time the world’s most popular wiki software, already available on
our advanced section, MediaWiki!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer

Is where you go! And remember, EASY one-clicks mean you can’t customize
things as much.. but we handle everything for you. With MediaWiki, the
customization is not such a big deal anyway, because we do allow you to
upload your wiki picture and there aren’t a lot of options or any
plugins really to speak of. WHILE USING A HANDS-FREE DEVICE.

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2.  One Click Entire Account Backups… New!

A feature last month that everybody seemed to have a GAS using was our
new ability to restore a domain’s web directory from one of our backups
via the panel.

Well, after nearly missing a raccoon in the middle of the 110, I decided
we should have a one-click feature that allows you to download zipped-up
backups of your ENTIRE account with us, including all users, mailboxes,
and databases!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.backups

I can’t take all the credit for the idea, it has been one of the most
popular suggestions for pretty near a decade actually. And, I’d like to
apologize to that raccoon’s family.

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3.  Dreamhost PS *Actually* all caught up!

Man, plantronics and jabra are lucky. I wish California would pass a law
requiring everybody to start using a VPS to host their website by August
1st, 2008. Maybe I should start a ballot initiative.

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

Because, believe it or not, we’ve (pretty much) gotten alllll the way
through our back log of pre-orders for DreamHost PS (see
http://www.dreamhostps.com/) and are ready to get new people provisioned
relatively quickly! We even have a couple of new options for DreamHost
PS which I may be about to write about in another section, assuming this
traffic doesn’t clear up so we can get all the coding finished up in the
next hour!

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3.5 The Traffic Cleared Up!

Unlucky you, we couldn’t get that sneaky extra DreamHost PS feature out
in between honking horns and screeching sirens! Instead, you’ll have to
wait until Tuesday, July 8th for this page to exist:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.settings

It’s a settings tab for your Virtual Private Server! It lets you do a
number of resource-saving things such as:

*  Use mod_php version 5.2
*  Turn on php caching for a super-performance boost
*  If you use jabber, turn off the ability to talk to aim/icq/msn/etc..
*  Turn off FTP access to your DreamHost PS entirely!

Of course, all these settings are not for MySQL PS.. those are already
pretty much all-the-way streamlined for doing MySQL!

Boy, we sure are stupid giving you all these ways to save money on VPS!
Even if there WERE a law requiring it, we’d hardly get mega-rich.

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4.  DHSOTM

Well, that was an easy newsletter. It’s no problem to hunker down and do
something on your laptop when you’re not being constantly interrupted by
annoying hands-pay phone calls. And it’s even easier to SHIFT GEARS from
reading about awesome new DreamHost features and focus on this month’s
winner of the DreamHost Site of the Month:

http://www.sandpixel.ae/

Which, as any fool can plainly see, is a design firm based in the UAE.
And, isn’t it _just_ like a design firm to have a nice looking website?

Well, it is. If you think you can compete with the likes of UAE design
firms, even though you’re not in the UAE nor a design firm, or perhaps
exactly because you ARE, then submit YOUR site for the DHSOTM at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

And next month the odds are really pretty good you’ll win and be
featured right here, in front of literally sevens of thousands of Happy,
Happy, Safe, DreamHost Customers.

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Heyo! It’s that time of the month and year again, the time when the
contest REALLY begins… the time of the May 2008 DreamHost Newsletter!

I’m sure you know what contest I’m talking about. I’m sure you’re
thinking, of course he’s not talking about Hillary ceding the nomination
to Obama. And I’m sure you’re not thinking, of course he’s talking about
the NBA Finals, which in honor of the pending 4-0 sweep by the Celtics,
he’s made this newsletter only 4 sections long plus a section 0 (for the
Lakers), plus a P.S. for the Parade through the Streets of Boston.

No, I’m quite sure you’re thinking of none of THOSE contests. I’m sure
you’re CORRECTLY thinking of the amazing 2-8 Dream Machine (yet
Lunarpages STILL won’t play us) and their quest against the seemingly
undefeated 10-0 “Akin Gump” in the first round of the LA City Rec League
playoffs tomorrow night, June 4th, at 7:30pm at Valley Plaza Rec Center,
12240 Archwood St, North Hollywood, CA 91606!

You know the drill.. anybody who shows up and cheers for us gets a $100
credit to their DreamHost account! If we win, I’ll make it $1000. Hell,
I’ll make it $1,000,000.

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1.  New Easy One-Click: Drupal!

I’m pleased to announce, that just like a 4-0 sweep, we now have FOUR oh
so good easy one-click installs available at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer

We already had WordPress, Zenphoto, and phpBB of course… what on EARTH
could the new number four be? Well, I sure hope you didn’t already read
the table on contents or the heading to this section and ruin the
surprise: it’s Drupal!

http://www.drupal.org/

Drupal is pretty much the most popular open source Content Management
System (CMS) out there, except for POSSIBLY Joomla (which we also have
as a difficult, er advanced, one-click install)! What a CMS is and how
it works has always escaped me, but if you’re the kind of person who
knows you need one, than you needn’t know nothing more now!

Why an easy one-click? Because Drupal has been notoriously hard to get
performing well, and as a centralized “easy” one-click we can do our
best to handle that BORING side of things for you! Thus allowing you to
focus more on the exciting side of figuring out what the heck a CMS is
and how, like Rajon Rondo, to dunk a basketball on Jason Maxiell.

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2.  One Click Domain Backup Restores… New!

Sometimes when a contest isn’t going the way you’d like, you, like
Hillary Clinton, may wish you could go back to the beginning and restore
things to the way they were. One big magic do-over, that’s all she asks.

Psht, that sort of thing may work in politics, but it doesn’t works with
web sites hosted at DreamHost… UNTIL NOW!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

now has a little “Restore” icon along the right side for each domain!

It works just like the little “Restore DB” icon does in our Manage MySQL
area, except that this one restores your web site files instead of your
database table. NO DOI.

Usually, there are three backups, the most recent, usually, being within
the last day and the oldest, usually, being about two weeks old. Notice
my generous use of the word: USUALLY.

As it says in big red letters along the top of the page, “WE MAKE NO
GUARANTEES ABOUT KEEPING BACKUPS OF YOUR DATA! YOU SHOULD ALWAYS KEEP
YOUR OWN OFF-DREAMHOST BACKUPS OF ALL IMPORTANT DATA! HERE’S HOW:”

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Backup_Website_Manually

Of course, we’ve ALWAYS had these backups available through the hidden
.snapshot directories, but you had to be something of a Knowledgeable
Kneddy to know how to do it.

Hopefully with this new and easy web-based interface, even all the
Klueless Kobes out there will finally be able to easily restore the
prior state of their life should a self-inflicted disaster in Colorado
involving a 19-year-old occur!

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3.  Gmail, New, At Your Domain!

In case you don’t read the DreamHost Blog, or say, I dunno, maybe a
little site called… SLASHDOT, I thought I might as well put it here
too:

We’ve now made it easy for you to use Google Apps at your Domain (which
features Google Docs, their start-page thing, and Google Talk as well as
Gmail) with domains hosted at DreamHost!

All you have to do is check off the boxes for it when adding or editing
a new domain or sub-domain at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

And ta-da, we’ll handle all the funky DNS records.. and even give you a
direct link to finish configuring things on Google’s side.

Remember, this is all 100% optional, but we have to admit, Gmail isn’t
such a bad choice for your email since:

* It’s at your own domain, and there are no ads in your signature.
* They’ve got a nice webmail interface, also at your domain.
* They’ve got POP/IMAP and SMTP so you can use regular email clients.
* They’ve got 6GB+ storage per mailbox.
* They’ve got great spam filtering, reliability, archiving and search.

Not that our stuff is so TERRIBLE. Buuuut… I’m just happy DreamHost
isn’t matched up with Gmail in the first round of the email provider
world series.

Note, if you _switch_ an existing domain to Gmail, none of your existing
accounts or email messages will be automatically transitioned! At this
point things are getting really boring and I should just send you to:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Gmail

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4.  DHSOTM

Oh man, this month’s DreamHost Site of the Month contest was a GOOD one!
At first, it looked like this one site had won, and I was about to give
it to them… but then I searched our discussion board and found:

http://discussion.dreamhost.com/showflat.pl?Board=forum_webdesign&Number=104601

And I felt so bad I just had to go rate that guy a 1 myself so that

http://www.inkblotcreative.com/

became this month’s winner! I also had to give this guy a 10 to push him
over the top. Capricious and unfair? Perhaps! But also that other guy
got mentioned in last May’s DHSOTM section for exactly the same site,
but was disqualified for ballot stuffing!

So how capricious and unfair would it have been for him to get mentioned
AGAIN! Very! Notice my careful non-mentioning? Very non-capricious!
Anyway, Inkblot Creative is a graphic services & design boutique with a
nice web site thing that you should look at.

If you’ve got a nice web site thing that people should look at, and
aren’t a Lakers fan, you should submit it for fair and balanced judging
at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

… let the games begin!

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