V10.10 October 2008

0. Introduction.
1. New.. DomainKeys (DKIM)!
2. New.. Drupal 6.6 and Wordpress 2.6.3!
3. New.. Rsync and SCP for your Backup User!
4. New.. PS up to 4GB, plus RAID 10!
5. New.. Charities!
6. DHSOTM


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0. Introduction.

(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!


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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.

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

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!

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!


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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!


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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!


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I approve this message,
Josh Jones

P.S. Exercise your right to choose; vote to no longer receive these
newsletters at:

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

URL source: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/V10.10_October_2008

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