V4.02 February 2002

0. Introduction.
1. New access.log file naming format!
2. Mailing Lists Confirmed Opt-In revisited!
3. Domainitron.com accredited!
4. Discussion.dreamhost.com reminder!
5. DHSOTM
6. Random quotes from newdream.net.


########################################################################
0. Introduction.

Isn't it just absolutely amazing how February sneaks past you? There I
was, subconciously assuming I had several days left to write the
newsetter, when WHAMEEOEE, tomorrow is March! And that means four days
from now is my birthday! As a special pre-birthday present to myself,
I'm going to try and make this newsletter match this month. Short.


########################################################################
1. New access.log file naming format!

Like February itself (which seems to happen every 11 months), this new
feature is not really COMPLETELY new, since I'm pretty sure we did this
near the end of our DH1 days. But anyway, we've re-re-done our access
and error log naming format for your sites. Rather than old logs being
named access.log.0, access.log.1, etc.. they're now named with the date
as the extension! So right now you probably have access.log.2002-02-27
in your logs directory.

The benefit of this is it's much clearer to remember which logs are for
which days.. and because of that it makes it much easier for us to
repair any hiccups in our nightly site statistics generation! This
renaming of the logs is only the first step in a number of changes
coming up that should greatly improve the reliability and accuracy of
our built in sites stats feature. Woo hoo!

One thing you might notice is that access.log.0 and error.log.0 still
exist in your logs directory. Don't worry! They are now always symbolic
links to the dated log file for yesterday. This lets you easily
download yesterday's logs every day if you want to without having to
think about the date at all!


########################################################################
2. Mailing Lists Confirmed Opt-In revisited!

You may remember from last month's newsletter that we were changing our
mailing list subscription policy to require confirmed opt-in from all
subscribers. You may have then also read the announcements made shortly
after that describing changes to that system. We wanted to just
summarize the current (and final, hopefully) policy for mailing list
subscription for everybody now!

All lists are set to be confirmed opt-in ONLY by default. You can change
this setting from the web panel however if you'd like to. We recommend
you keep it confirmed opt-in of course, as it protects you more from
spam complaints and ensures that everybody getting your newsletter
really wanted it (just like we're sure YOU really wanted this
newsletter!).

When somebody signs up to your list and must be confirmed, they will get
an email mailed to their email address with a unique URL for them to go
to verify their address. You can now completely customize that email via
the mailing list [edit] link at our web panel's mailing list area. You
can also customize the message they get when submitting your form that
tells them to go check their email. You simply use a "emailconfirmurl"
hidden variable in your form.

Remember, even if your list is NOT confirmed opt-in, anybody who has
unsubscribed from a mailing list will HAVE to confirm all future
subscription requests (and YOU won't be able to add them from our web
panel either). So you should really customize your verification email
and emailconfirmurl even if your list is not set to be confirmed opt-in
only!

Finally, we added a bunch of form-mail like features to our mailing
list script that allows you to add any other fields you'd like to your
mailing list subscription form and get them emailed to you when somebody
subscribes to your list. For the full documentation on that feature as
well as all the rest, visit our Knowledge Base article on it:

https://kbase.newdream.net/?area=858


########################################################################
3. Domainitron.com accredited!

Domainitron.com is now an official ICANN-accredited registrar! We
finally got word this month! ICANN themselves haven't made a press
release or anything yet, but check us out on their list:

http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Wa hoo! (New Dream Network, LLC dba Domainitron.com is us, duh!)

What this means is we can now get our registry-registrar contracts in
order (we're working on the verisign one right now) and soon be a full-
fledged domain registrar, rather than a Tucows reseller!

What THAT means is we'll be able to eliminate one more middle-man in our
domain registration process! That'll result in better integration and
data reliability, as well as lower domain registration costs, which we
will in turn pass on to you!

We're excited!


########################################################################
4. Discussion.dreamhost.com reminder!

Since February is such a short month we've got to really stretch to get
any sort of interesting news into our newsletter. So, uh, here's a
reminder about our customer discussion boards at:

http://discussion.dreamhost.com/

Go use em! Talk to each other! Make friends and enemies! Learn and
teach! A lot of dreamhost employees also peruse the boards so it's a
cool place to get your suggestions heard and discussed in an open forum!

We're trying to get more active discussion in them.. you may have
noticed the new link right to it from the top of the web panel for
example..

The more posters, the more value to the people who post! Do your part!
Invest!


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

This month's coveted DreamHost Site of the Month award-winner is the
cute personal site:

http://www.pinkisgood.com/

It's a sorta typical web-log sorta site run by Jenn who lives in
Toronto. She actually hasn't updated it in a month or so, but that's
perfectly understandable since February is such a short month.. who has
the time to make a weblog entry, much less write a whole newsletter?!

She's also got some flash games she (I think?) wrote herself, and some
recommendations on cosmetics! Yow! I hope she doesn't mind that the only
thing you get for being the DHSOTM these days is instant recognition
among thousands of your peers!

If YOU want that sorta recognition, enter your site (it's FREE) at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tab=home&subtab=dhsotm


########################################################################
6. Random quotes from newdream.net.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo. -- Andy Finkel, computer guy

If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst.

An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit.
-- Henry Ford


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

That wasn't so bad...
-- Josh

URL source: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/V4.02_February_2002

---

<-- Previous Dream Host newsletter V4.01 January 2002 | Next Dream Host newsletter V4.03 March 2002 -->

Related newsletters