V3.12 December 2001

0. Introduction.
1. Webmail.yourdomain.com!
2. Registration Price Drop!
3. Domainitron.com.
4. DHSOTM
5. Random quotes from newdream.net.

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0. Introduction.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the December 2001 Newsletter! I know, I
know, it's not December and it's not 2001. But it IS a newsletter! Well
yeah, I know it's not _really_ a newsletter in the traditional sense
either, since there's really nothing in it that would qualify as *news*
and it has way more than just one letter in it. So maybe it's better to
just think of this thing you're currently reading as a fictional period-
piece that's just been _titled_ the "December 2001 Newsletter".

Now, I guess I should stop skirting the issue and just come right out
with WHY this fictional period-piece is a good week later than the
latest it should really be. I guess it's always hard to just come out
and say it when you have really bad news. So I've been procrastinating
and hemming and hee-hawing and generally avoiding a confrontation. But
that's gone on long enough and it's about time I just be a MAN and come
right out with it. You're all grown ups, or at least the size of one,
you can handle the cold hard truth. So here it is: We're plum out of
DreamHost T-shirts for DHSOTM winners. If you guys all want to just
unsubscribe now, I more than 100% understand. I encourage it in fact.

For those of you who don't want some fictional period-piece-author
deciding what you should and shouldn't unsubscribe from, continue on to
what we call "news" around here, described in hundreds and hundreds of
letters..

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1. Webmail.yourdomain.com!

For the last month as we skulked about, trying to decide how best to not
ever let anybody know we didn't have any more T-shirts, we were able to
squeeze in a few MAJOR requests people have been asking about for say
the last few DECADES. Mainly, we are now ready to launch a "preview
release" to all of you of a new web-based way to access your DreamHost
mailboxes! Yowzers! Stop the presses! Call the Associated Press and
Reuters! I hope Time hasn't already printed all those silly covers with
the new iMac on the front, because they're going to want to change it
now! (see http://sakots.pekori.jp/imgboard/imgs/img20020107162803.jpg)

Anyway, over the last month we've been slowly testing an open-sourced,
php, IMAP-based webmail client for small percentages of our clients,
and we've decided now that we've reached a point where we can announce
it to ALL you lovely DreamHostees semi-officially! It is still not
"officially" supported yet and won't be, say, posted on DreamHost.com or
documented in the Knowledge Base or anything like that until we're
absolutely sure it can handle the load and is the best solution to
provide web access to your email. But it looks like it will probably
work pretty well, so here's all the info you and your clients need to
start using it right now!

1. Right now, all DreamHost domains have http://webmail.domain.com/ set
up and working. Go there and try it out! If you already had webmail set
up as a sub-domain, then yours is at dhwebmail.domain.com instead!

2. From there you log in with your email address, NOT the mailbox user
name (that m3352594-like thing). If you WOULD like to use your mailbox
name to log in instead of the email adddress, you need to put a ! at the
end of the username. So like if I have josh@domain.com forwarding to the
mailbox m3532112, I can log in with just "josh" or "m3532112!" (if I
prefer for some strange reason).

3. That's it! From there you've got IMAP access to your mail account!
There are some preferences you can set that are all pretty
self-explanatory, and your from address is by default your name and the
email address you used to log in, but you can change that to whatever
you want easily! If you don't see any mail when you log in, it may be
because you normally use POP3 to get your email (which moves the mail
off the server and onto your home computer) and didn't choose the
option in your email client to leave a copy of the emails on the server.

Hope everybody likes it, and if you come across any bugs or strange
behavior, please let us know at support@dreamhost.com!

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2. Registration Price Drop!

Now this one definitely isn't news, but we've got to fill space somehow,
right? I say it's not news because although there's been no official
announcement, the change was made several weeks ago (IN December, 2001,
actually!) around our system. The change is easy enough to explain...
all prices for domain registration, transfer, and renewal have gone from
$30/year to $25/year, effective immediately minus several weeks! Don't
say we never already did nothing for ya!

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3. Domainitron.com.

More "news" in the Domain Registration department! Again - this isn't
exactly Geraldo Riviera-style ground breaking investigative journalism,
but more of the "official" announcement of our Domain Registration site
that you probably already used if you needed to renew your domain in the
last few weeks. The site in named "Domainitron.com", through the stealth
marketing technique known as Brand-Confusion/Dilution, and it's where
super friendly domain registration robots wait on you hand and foot for
all your domain-related needs! Did I say robots? I meant BIG robots!

Now a quick Q and A session.

Q. Tell me more about these robots..

A. We tried to make those BIG robots really fast and easy to get along
with, yet still able to handle everything you ever need to do in regards
to domain registrations!

Q. Are there really any robots?

A. Yeah, sure!

Q. Really really?

A. No.

Q. Why make a separate site like this for domain registrations anyway?

A. Well, for one thing we wanted to clarify for newcomers a bit more the
difference between your web host and where you registered your domain.
For another, we're going to be ICANN-accredited sometime relatively soon
and thought that it made a lot of sense to start separating out our
registration processes from the hosting in preparation for that. Of
course, it'll all still be closely tied to DreamHost to make things easy
to use and simplify billing and all those sorts of issues!

Q. No more questions your honor.

A. Mr. Defense Attorney?

Q. No more questions your honor.

A. Excellent (Monty Burns style).

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4. DHSOTM

Is it even WORTH running the DreamHost Site of the Month contest now
that there are no T-shirts to give out? It depends, I guess, on what we
give out to replace them. How about we go back to what we used to give
away.. absolutely nothing! In that case, sure, I'd say it's worth it for
us to keep the contest going!

So here it is, the first site to win the all new, retro-DHSOTM award:
It's Linda Book's World of Music for Kids at http://www.lindabook.com/ !
They say it's "A fun site of kid's music that your children will love.
Features free songs, music videos, and fun stuff." And I believe them!
It's yet another site by Josh Book, previous DHSOTM winner for
Bookartoons.com. Very suspicious! No, not really, both sites are
excellent, and Josh took the initiative to submit them to the DHSOTM
contest. It must be something in the name "Josh" that gives a person a
lot of initiative while still making them really good looking.

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5. Random quotes from newdream.net.

Out of the mouths of babes does often come cereal. -- Anonymous

A yawn is a silent shout. -- G.K. Chesterton

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no
longer believe you. -- Nietzsche

Happy New Year! --Josh!

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Dream Host customer newsletter

Dream Host newsletter - V3.12 December 2001 - Dec 12, 2001