V6.01 January 2004

0. Introduction.
1. No more conuery limits!
2. PHP-CGI is the default!
3. New! Bandwidth Throttling!
4. What do YOU do with DreamHost?
5. DHSOTM.

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0. Introduction.

Hello and welcome once again to the January 2004 Happy DreamHost
Newsletter! I say "once again" because this is about the nineteith time
I've written it. Let me explain. Well first, let me apologize for the
January newsletter coming out February 5th.. that's really really late,
even by government standards. You see, I was originally planning to
write this on Saturday, January 31st. But I'd totally forgotten that was
National Gorilla Suit Day! And I ended up just not being able to squeeze
it in among all the chest-pounding and nit-picking! But no problem, I
figured, I'll just do it during the half time of the superbowl!

http://www.newsfromme.com/images/gorillabowl.jpg

Let's just say Tivo and Janet Jackson conspired to make sure THAT didn't
happen. No problem I thought, I'll just write it after the SuperBowl..
as long as the January newsletter comes out on February 1st, everything
is still golden. Well, unfortunately I live on Symphony Road in Boston,
and a few Northeastern students conspired to make sure the only
newsletter-writing I was doing was the type that flips over parked cars:

http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=news_photos&p=symphony

But still, "No problem!" I thought.. I'll just write it Monday morning
and send it out on Groundhog's Day! And that's what I did! But then I
woke up Tuesday with this eerie feeling of deja-vu, and guess what? It
was Monday again. So I re-wrote the newsletter, sent it again, and did
everything I'd done on Monday all over again, just to wake up the "next"
day and have it be February 2nd AGAIN! Well, to make a long story short,
I finally made it to February 3rd. But by that point I was way beyond
writing some piddly DreamHost newsletter every morning! What a horrible
ordeal. On the bright side I'm now a concert pianist, master ice
sculptor, and all around well-adjusted person.

Anyway, it took me until today to realize most likely you guys never
actually received one of the plethora of newsletters I'd been sending
each and every Groundhog morning. So here, I hope you enjoy the January
2004 DreamHost newsletter, over thirty (Groundhog) years in the making.

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1. No more conuery limits!

It seems like decades ago that we enacted this, but in case you haven't
been checking the DreamHost site or the Kbase recently, I thought you
might like to know there are now no hard-set "conuery" limits for MySQL
databases on any of our plans!

"If that's the case, why is there still a \"Status > MySQL\" area of the
web panel?" you may ask. "Because," I may reply, "it took a long time to
program that panel."

And besides, you STILL should keep an eye on your "conuery" usage and do
your best to minimize it (remember, a "conuery" is 25 times each
database connect plus each database query). Why? Because it's the
"courteous" thing to do! That, and the fact that we're still monitoring
usage ourselves and reserve the right to smack down anybody who uses so
many as to cause problems with their MySQL server. But really, we've
been looking at it and the number of people who fall into that category
are like one per month. So there's only about a 0.004% chance it's going
to be a problem for you. Which is WHY we took away the conuery limits
anyway! It was just causing needless worry for the 99.996% of you who've
got better things to worry about, like "Isn't this actually an
orangutan suit?"

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2. PHP-CGI is the default!

In the same vein of "features that aren't really features, just policy
changes", we've now made PHP-CGI the default way PHP is run on all new
domains. For old domains, PHP is still run as an apache module.. but you
can now change which way you'd like it run from the "Domains > Web" area
of our web panel (just click the edit link for your domain).

It used to be if you wanted to turn PHP-CGI on for your domain, you'd
have to make a .htaccess file in your web directory with some crazy
jammy-jam text in it. So now it's easier. And the default. And if you
don't know the difference between PHP-CGI and PHP as an apache module,
just be happy to know that PHP-CGI is probably better for you! Or if you
REALLY want to learn more, there's always this Kbase article:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/?area=2933

Now you can flip your PHP settings as easily as my car!

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3. New! Bandwidth Throttling!

Finally, a new feature for real!

So, you know how you're always getting SO MUCH TRAFFIC to your website,
and you're just too popular and too cool? And unlike me, you don't live
the same day over and over again, so past visits actually accumulate and
you can use up your full bandwidth allocation each month, and even go
over sometimes? And you know how you're really poor and can't make money
off your website, even though it's so popular and gets SO MUCH TRAFFIC?

So, you know how you wish you could just shut it down automatically each
month whenever you're getting close to your limit, and then
automatically have it come back up once the billing cycle is over and
your bandwidth use is reset?

Well, you're in luck! Now you can set any of your domains to be
automatically "throttled" when they reach a pre-set (by you!) bandwidth
limit for your billing cycle! Just go to the "Status > Bandwidth" area
of our web panel and click the link for the "throttle" settings:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=status.bw

When a domain is throttled, all that happens is its web directory
changes from whatever you set it as before (say "/home/user/domain.com")
to having an extra ".throttled" at the end (which means it would be like
"/home/user/domain.com.throttled"; doi). So what you should do when you
set up throttling is also make that directory on your account and put
up a really minimal site that explains how you've taken down your site
so you don't use too much bandwidth. Maybe even put a DreamHost
Donations link up or sumpin', eh? And don't forget to make a custom 404
page (missing.html) in that dir if you want to catch people linking deep
into your site when you're throttled!

You'll get an email when your site has been throttled, and if you want
you can go to the web panel and immediately unthrottle it. Otherwise
your site will be automatically unthrottled when your next billing cycle
begins. Finally, since that the throttler only runs once a day, we can't
guarantee that just because you've set your site to be throttled it
won't still go over that threshold a bit (if you get a huge spike in
traffic in one day). But at least now, rather than constantly watching
your bandwidth usage, you can leave it all to us and just sit back and
master ice sculpting!

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4. What do YOU do with DreamHost?

I know what *I* do with DreamHost.. but what do *YOU* do with DreamHost?

That is, *I* use DreamHost to make mega-bucks so I can live on a
zeppelin slowly circling the south pacific. But what do *YOU* do with
DreamHost?

Okay, what am I talking about?

Okay, here's the deal.. we're planning on adding a little "featurettes"
section to http://www.dreamhost.com/ highlighting a few (no more than 5)
of our Happy Customers and what their sites are all about and how it is
that we were just sooo perfect for them. So if you've got an interesting
story and would like to be considered for such enviable linking, please
send us an email with your pitch to stories@dreamhost.com.

You don't need to make the email really long, but just kind of a good
overview that would make us decide to choose you! After we get all these
emails (deadline is uh.. how about.. Valentine's day? (February 14th for
those of you happy enough to be single)) we'll write back to the five or
so we think would make a good "featurette" and then we'll get more
details and pictures and stuff too!

Now, one of the MAIN things we're looking for I guess is what unique
DreamHost feature was it that really helped you and your site? For some
crib notes, here are a few things that are kinda unique about us in web
hosting:

* Jabber Server.
* Quicktime Streaming.
* Miva Merchant included on a pretty cheap plan.
* We keep two hourly, two daily, and two weekly FULL backups of all
websites on all plans for free, and you can access them in the hidden
.snapshot directory in every directory of every user.
* All Debian.
* Lots of Domains/SubDomains/Users/Databases/Disk/Bandwidth.
* DreamHost Rewards.
* DreamHost Donations.
* We're small(ish), never merged with anybody, and not public.
* The Sexiest Newsletter Writer in the Industry, nay, the World.

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5. DHSOTM.

Oh yeah, another unique thing about us.. is there another host out there
that offers such an AMAZING service as the DreamHost Site of the Month
contest, and offers it every month without fail, at no cost whatsoever?

NO! (Rhetorically speaking of course.)

Now, as the French say, without further adieu, we give you this month's
super-sexy, super-cool, super-trusty DHSOTM winner:

http://www.formworks-studio.com/

Which is a site where you can buy furniture I think! Er, art I mean! And
it's nice looking, so I'm glad they won! Next month, if you want me to
be glad you won, you're going to have to go here to find out what the
DHSOTM is all about!

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

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Ah, my final January 2004 newsletter..
Josh!

P.S. Is this you: "What is this junk? I pay you to host my site, not
blab on about yourselves all the damn time!"? If so, set your
subscription preferences for this and all DreamHost correspondence at:

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

Dream Host customer newsletter

Dream Host newsletter - V6.01 January 2004 - Jan 1, 2004