V6.04 April 2004

0. Introduction.
1. Now, earn $65 a referral!
2. We're registering our own domains!
3. We're registering .info domains!
4. Webmail spell checking for English, Spanish, French AND Swedish!
5. The new router!
6. DHSOTM.

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0. Introduction.

Welcome once again to the DreamHost Monthly Newsletter, themed this
month with the most awesomest theme I ever themed. ME! That's right,
it's about time I put this whole newsletter-writing world straight, and
let them know who really rules the roost. Josh-a-doodle-do, baby.

I was just listening to that new Eminem song on the radio, and one part
really spoke to me, "I swear to frickin' god, you frickin' rock..." I
realized, "I swear to frickin' god, *I* frickin' rock". Now don't get me
wrong.. I may not be the smartest guy in the world, nor the richest guy
in the world, nor the funniest guy in the world, nor the youngest guy in
the world, nor even the tallest guy in the world. However, I doubt
there's anybody in the world who's smarter, richer, funnier, younger,
AND taller than me! That is how hard I rock it.

Some facts about me:

I am smart: I got an 800 on the math SAT when I was 12. No joking.
I am rich: I co-founded a multi-million dollar webhosting company.
I am funny: See this newsletter, haters.
I am young: I was born March 4th, 1977.
I am tall: 6'5", naked.

So, please, if anybody can prove to me somebody who beats me in ALL FIVE
of those categories, let me know, and next newsletter will be all about
them, I promise. I'm mature enough to do that. But they've got to prove
it man!

Here are some very close contenders I thought of:

Conan O'Brien:
Smart: He went to Harvard. I went to Harvey Mudd. He wins.
Rich: He hosts a late night TV show on NBC. I host an e-newsletter
for an obscure web host.
Funny: He's a professional comedian. I can barely spell comedian.
Tall: I hear he's like 6'5" too.. we'll give him the tie!
Young: HA.. dude is like FOURTEEN YEARS older than me!

LeBron James:
Rich: LeBron got $99 million for five years just from Nike! I
spend $99 on Nikes five times a year.
Funny: What a riot! Have you seen his Sprite ad where he crushes
the bottle behind his neck? HOWL!
Tall: LeBron is 6'8". That's why they call him a MAN-child.
Young: LeBron was born Dec 30th, 1984. That's why they call him a
man-CHILD.
Smart: LeBron didn't even go to college.. JOSH WINS AGAIN!

And that was all I could think of. Please, somebody prove me wrong!

I just noticed this is probably the longest intro I've ever written for
the newsletter. No biggy, I think it's fair to say I deserved it.

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1. Now, earn $65 a referral!

One thing I didn't mention in the introduction was just how much cool
stuff we got done this month! Of course, that's not really the point of
the introduction. The point of the introduction is generally to distract
you from how little cool stuff we got done this month. Old habits die
hard.

Anyway, new today, we've added a VERY AWESOME new option to our Rewards
program! It used to be that whenever you referred somebody to DreamHost,
you got a 10% credit for of all money they paid us for as long as they
were a customer, plus 5% of all the money anybody they referred paid!

Now, you can still do that if you'd like, but we are also giving you the
option to instead receive a one-time up front payment of $65 per
referral, plus $5 for any sub-referrals! To switch the type of referrals
you'd like, just go to our Rewards area of the web panel (under the Edit
Profile link at the top) and it should be pretty clear:

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

And remember, you don't even have to be a DreamHost customer (although
you are) to sign up at:

http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.html

(You don't need to sign up for it if you're already a customer.. just
give people this link: http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?YOURWEBID)

Now, sixty-five bucks per sign up is a lot of money! "How can we afford
something like that," you may ask? I told you: I'm rich, beeotch!

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2. We're registering our own domains!

Another super duper thing happened this month.. something that was over
THREE years in the making: We finally started 100% registering domains
under our own ICANN-accredited registrar account! Even though we were
accredited more than two years ago, it wasn't until this month that we
finally got all the paperwork and technical side of things complete and
actually went live registering .com, .net, and .org domains on our
account instead of Tucows (who we used to resell for).

This is a great time for us! What does it mean for you though? Not much!
Well, the main thing is we decided to decommission Domainitron.com, and
move all the functionality of it straight into the DreamHost Web Panel
under the new "Domain > Registration" and "Domain > Transfer" tabs:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.registration
and
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.transfer

Wow, I honestly can barely remember a time before we were working on
this. You know why? I'm young, beeeeotch!

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3. We're registering .info domains!

As a pleasant side-effect of finally getting our accreditation stuff in
order, we've been able to pretty easily add support for .info domains to
our system now!

How does it work? Just like .com/net/org domains actually! You can now
get a .info domain instead for free with any hosting plan, or add them
for $25/year through the "Domain > Registration" tab mentioned above.
That's all there is to it!

Note, you can also register .la domains through that tab! But, since
they are $50/year, you can't use them as your free domain with a hosting
plan. Sorry!

How did we add all these new TLDs so quickly and seamlessly into our new
syststem? Hmmm... maybe because I'm smart, beeeeeeotch!

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4. Webmail spell checking for English, Spanish, French AND Swedish!

Herre's somegting that may be userul for som peopel.. we nwo ahve spell
checking innstallled for not o nly english, but spanish frenhch, and
even SW@IDiths in our webmail client (swuitreelmail), which is avialble
for all domains ath:

http://webmail.yourfdomain.com/

I jknow I wont find a newd for it, but sint may be usefule for some fo
YOU!

Oh man, I'm funny. Beeeeeeeeeeeeotch!

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5. The new router!

Now seriously folks, I thought I should take some time out of this side-
splitting love fest and go into a little bit about how we're coming
along in our network infrastructure stuff. Basically, what we've been
doing to keep what happened on March 29th from ever recurring.

Well, the main thing is we've got much better detection of DDOS going,
thanks to a new off-site network monitoring system we wrote up. In fact,
since March 29th we've already had TWO more DDOSes, and each one was
more or less dealt with in under an hour. More awareness and earlier
detection are definitely the best defenses against this kind of thing.

We also still have http://status.dreamhost.com/ up at an off-network
location. Remember to go there for emergency status updates should our
web panel be down! We've also added a little script to send a list of
all the contact email addresses for our customer to the off-network
server so we have a way to email an announcement out to all our
customers should we be unable to reach our own internal databases! We
now know that good communication when there is a problem is about as
important as avoiding the problems in the first place.

Finally, on Wednesday we'll be installing our new router, a new Cisco
6509 with two "sup2 engines".. whatever that means! According to network
guy Jeremy though, this new router will "rock harder than you", although
I seriously doubt it. But honestly, it is supposedly 210x more powerful
than our current routers! That's right, TWO-HUNDRED and TEN. Cool.
During the switch, there _may_ be a slight bit of network downtime,
although our plan is to do it in such a way that there isn't any. Of
course, something could go wrong. Be on the lookout for an announcement
by Monday at the latest with more details on when the switch-over will
happen.

We would have gotten the new router out even faster, but they needed my
help to install it. Nobody could reach up to the top of the rack where
we were going to put it, you see. Fortunately I'm tall, BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEotch.

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6. DHSOTM.

This month's DreamHost Site of the Month award goes to a personal online
portfolio site (don't they all?).. one by the name of:

http://www.atomdriven.com/

If you haven't visited it yet, do it. Go ahead, do it. DO IT.

If you don't know what the DHSOTM contest is, or how to enter, visit:

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

DO IT.

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Bring on the competition,
Josh!

P.s. Maybe, like my girlfriend, you're totally sick of hearing how
awesome I rock? That'd be pretty weird, but nonetheless you can
unsubscribe from the DreamHost newsletter via your contact preferences:

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

Dream Host customer newsletter

Dream Host newsletter - V6.04 April 2004 - Apr 4, 2004