V11.05 May 2009
From DreamHost
0. Introduction. 1. $15 SSL Certificates! 2. New! One-click Trac installation! 3. Final Crazy $10,000 API Contest Reminder! 4. More Navigation Reorganization! 5. New: Less features! 6. DHSOTM ######################################################################## 0. Introduction. What the?! Newsletter time AGAIN? What is this one, May?! In the actual month of May?! Have we been pumping out the hits or WHAT? And there's 6 sections too? With only THREE of them repeats from last week's monthly newsletter? And only ONE of the others a removal of features? What's that you say? This DreamHost newsletter team of Josh is better than if Terminator Salvation and X-men Origins: Wolverine got drunk and had a baby? Well same to you, bub. Harumph. You try and do something nice for some people, all you get is nasty remarks and backhanded insults. Poopy. ######################################################################## 1. $15 SSL Certificates! Now, if they had said I was better than the love child of Star Trek and Up, then maybe I would have given them some AWESOME new features this month. What the, heck I think I still will anyway. I'm going to eat some twinkies and be the bigger man! As those who read our blog can see from this blog post: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2009/05/28/broken-browsers-part-two/ we've reduced the price for SSL certificates from us from $100/year to.. $FIFTEEN! All new certificates and old certificate renewals will be at this price! It's only available to DreamHost customers, and it's 50% less than anybody else (we can find) on the ENTIRE PLANET! Your certs are yours, you can use them at different hosts even. You will need a unique IP for your domain if you want to use your SSL cert with us (and anybody else).. and those are still $3.95/month. But in a year or two we'll be at IPv6 and that'll probably be down to $0.0000000001/month. https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage Is where you go to add a secure cert to your domain (click the "edit" link under "Secure Hosting", add a self-signed cert, and then click the link in the success message to upgrade to a FULL cert). ######################################################################## 2. New! One-click Trac installation! As much as I hate responding to popular suggestions, especially after I've just been so deeply and thoroughly insulted, I'm going to. I'm just that big of a masochist. In the past, if you've wanted to install "Trac" (a project management / bug tracker / wiki that uses subversion) you had to be a pretty big masochist too. Well I apologize to all the masochists we've got out there, but I guess I'm a bit of a sadist too.. you can now install Trac with one little checkbox when you install Subversion from our panel: https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.svn As well as after the fact from our one-click installers area: https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer And if you want to password-protect your Trac install, just use our htaccess area: https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.webdav So I guess I'm some kind of cross between a sadist and a masochist. You know what my sadist side does to my masochist side? Nothing. Oh yeah.. one little thing. If YOU don't happen to see these options when you go to the URLs above, it's because you're on an old server and haven't been upgraded yet! Just like that cute kitten in the poster, hang in there ... we are shooting to have everybody upgraded by the end of the summer! ######################################################################## 3. Final Crazy $10,000 API Contest Reminder! End of the summer? WHO CAN WAIT THAT LONG? Definitely not anybody entering our CRAZY $10,000 API contest.. which ends Sunday, May 31st at midnight, pacific time! For those who haven't been reading this blog entry: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2009/04/09/big-boy-time/ We've got an Application Programming Interface to various DreamHost features now (and the number of features are growing all the time!): http://wiki.dreamhost.com/API In fact, we just added five more: 'mysql-list_dbs', 'mysql-list_hostnames', 'mysql-list_users', 'mail-list_filters', and 'announcement_list-post_announcement', Remember, the prizes for developing an application that uses our API are as follows: Grand Prize: $5,000 1st Place: $2,500 2nd Place: $1,250 3rd Place: $500 4th Place: $750 The fact that fourth place is more than third is what gives this contest its CRAZY moniker. ######################################################################## 4. More Navigation Reorganization! Remember lasssst newsletter how I went on and on and on about some re- jiggering we did with our navigation area ordering? And remember how I used to wish for a living room with a plaster lion in it from Mexico and how I always wanted a large twenty four seat dining table in a dining room with original oil paintings by Michelangelo and Rembrandt and remember how I always wanted a rotating bed with pink chiffon and zebra stripes and remember how I used to chit chat with dad about always wanting a bathtub shaped like a clam and an office with orange and white stripes and remember how much I wanted an all red billiard room with a giant stuffed camel and how I wanted a disco room with my own disco dancers and a party room with fancy friends and remember how much I wanted a big backyard with Grecian statues, s-shaped hedges and three swimming pools? Well, I got that too. Not to mention, this month we also changed the look of the navigation bar at https://panel.dreamhost.com/ and added a fancy-pants "Toolbox" at the top which is just a shortcut of our most-used web panel areas! And still on the agenda, maybe someday soon, we'll even remember what you have maximized and perhaps let you drag your OWN favorite areas to that toolbar! ######################################################################## 5. New: Less features! Of course, what good is a May 2009 DreamHost newsletter without a few UN- features?! Like, we no longer allow customer rebooting DreamHost PS MySQL .. they really don't need to be and you can end up corrupting your tables! And, if you want to use WordPress MU (Multi-User edition), we're going to have to ask you do it on DreamHost PS .. it's just a CRAZY resource hog and it looks like the most common thing people use it for is shady search engine shenanigans anyway! Finally, we no longer provide hosting services for vegans. Come on people, how can you not eat ice cream?! ######################################################################## 6. DHSOTM Just kidding about the vegan thing folks! I already apologize! No need to write into support about it! And I also already apologize for this month's DreamHost Site of the Month winner: http://www.ecommercegallery.com/ Which is just a site showing a bunch of other sites? Kind of uh, interesting, I guess? Nice simple design? I guess the main thing this says is, there's really no reason YOU shouldn't submit YOUR site: https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm Based on that I'd say it's VERY likely you too could get mentioned in this newsletter with literally tens of subscribers. ######################################################################## Always mentioned in this newsletter, Josh Jones! P.S. Enough newsletter mentioning? Unsubscribe via the contact prefs at: https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact
