V9.10 October 2007

0. Introduction.
1. New! "Goodies > Block Spiders"
2. New! "Domain > Proxy Server"
3. New! Mailroom by Sproutit "partner"!
4. DHSOTM


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0. Introduction.

As October is a short month (only 31 days), I believe it deserves
nothing less than an equally short DreamHost newsletter.

And don't try and tell me 31 days isn't short. You wouldn't tell someone
who was 31 inches tall THEY weren't short, would you? No, you'd want to
tell them all the time, so it'd really sink in.

At least that's what I do to my nephew. When is that kid going to grow?

I mean, I'm not saying he's short for his _age_, but still, overall he
is NOT a tall man. And that's ALL I'm saying about October; it's not
really that short for a _month_, but 31 days is overall not really a
long amount of time.

Definitely not long enough to write a newsletter of any quality.


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1. New! "Goodies > Block Spiders"

Just like they now have robots to make you tall, and I have a robot to
write newsletters in 32 days or less, YOU now have a robot to block
robots from visiting (and indexing) your website, if for some reason
that's not what you're into.

Of course, you ALWAYS had a robot to do that, robots.txt. But robots.txt
is a strange and slightly androgynous method, so now we've created a
simplified interface from our easy-to-use-yet-hard-to-make web panel:

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

Block those nasty robot spiders NOW, before they spider your website and
crash your server... and DECADES before they invade your home and eat
your babies.

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/08/10/the-internet-is-not-for-people/


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2. New! "Domain > Proxy Server"

In that dystopian future with robot spiders crawling the terrain,
"indexing" our homes and bodies acting as a proxy for our merciless
dark overlord, Queen Michelle Obama, the only faint glimmer of happiness
still remaining in the deep recesses of your memory will be that day,
November 1st, 2007, when DreamHost vainly attempted to give you, THE
PEOPLE, your OWN proxy, to do with it what you would have:

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

With this ancient proxy, you were finally able (on DreamHost PS only!)
to run WHATEVER kind of persistent server you wanted to yourself..
whether it be Mongrel for Ruby on Rails, Tomcat for Java Servlets/JSP,
or even other web servers like Lighttpd or Nginx, and have it accessed
via the web at a port you specify between 8000 and 65535!

Though largely dismissed at the time as a confusing and uninteresting
feature, the AMAZING flexibility it afforded to those who understood
this enigma later proved to be the only thing remotely capable of
keeping DreamHost customers Happy as stability and customer service
quickly and inevitably eroded (on DreamHost PS only).


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3. New! Mailroom by Sproutit "partner"!

The beginning of that erosion is widely agreed upon to be the day, Sept
23rd, 1997, when DreamHost was founded. But the process definitely
took a turn for the worse on June 29th, 2007, when DreamHost announced
their new "partners" area at:

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

And started actually "officially" making deals with other service
providers in a way that in perfect hindsight really could lead to
nothing BUT disaster.

Take heed though, the same thing does NOT have to happen to you.
Although adding another partner to that page may eventually result in
dire consequences for US, there's perhaps a tiny chance it could help
YOU.

Because this NEW partner, "Sproutit" is offering some software called
"Mailroom" that lets multiple people handle a "public" mailbox, like say
support@dreamhost.com. That's not to say WE use it for that address, but
MAYBE we WOULD have, if we had only KNOWN.

They'll even let you try it out for two months free, which is more than
I can say for October.


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4. DHSOTM

In fact, I am SO sick of October, I'm glad it's over, and I'm glad I
waited on PURPOSE until November to write and send its newsletter,
something I don't NORMALLY do.

And, I'm very sorry for Heather Christo, because her site won the DHSOTM
contest in such a LAME LAME month.

http://www.heatherchristo.com/

October is even lamer than April, my favorite month, despite not having
even one cool person's birthday in it. But Heather's site is not really
very lame at all, which is a surprise given it is apparently the site of
the month out of the 600,000 domains we host!

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/10/31/600000-reasons-to-eat-candy/

It's a non-flash, non-portfolio, site about cooking and stuff! Maybe your
site is just like it?

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

Would be the place to find out.


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Pumpkin Pie,
Josh Jones

P.S. I'm sorry if your birthday is in April or October, based on your
interpretation of that sentence above, and I offended you. You can
unsubscribe from further newsletters by managing your contact
preferences here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

URL source: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/V9.10_October_2007

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