V4.02 February 2002
From DreamHost
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
