V10.05 May 2008

0. Introduction.
1. New Easy One-Click: Drupal!
2. One Click Domain Backup Restores... New!
3. Gmail, New, At Your Domain!
4. DHSOTM


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0. Introduction.

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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KG over KB,
Josh Jones

P.S. Was this month's newsletter STILL too long or lame? Either way, you
can unsubscribe by managing your contact preferences at:

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

URL source: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/V10.05_May_2008

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