From DreamHost
0. Introduction.
1. What a month.
2. ActiveCollab one-click.
3. Disk/Transfer status bars.
4. Auto-responder changes.
5. DHSOTM
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0. Introduction.
This month's newsletter I'm going to try something completely new and
fresh. In light of recent events DreamHost-wide and world-wide, I'm
going to try and go through a full newsletter without the use of the
"exclamation mark".
Truly, there is nothing in recent events that would warrant such a mark
of exclaim. Power outages, network outages, filer outages, servers down,
war in the middle east, the list goes on and on...
Not to mention, the "features" to be announced in this newsletter are so
patently lame I would be downright _humiliated_ to present them with
such false enthusiasm and glory.
Let the blase begin.
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1. What a month.
Exclamation marks or no, this month was not without its excitement. For
our system administrators at least. There was the power outage, the wild
dogs, the other power outage, the plague, and the PLA.
Just kidding about the plague.
The full (true) account of the last three weeks has been posted to our
blog at:
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/08/01/anatomy-of-an-ongoing-disaster/
I'd read it myself if I weren't feeling so lethargic. And melancholy.
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2. ActiveCollab one-click.
Speaking of lethargic, I added a new one-click install this month. Don't
get too excited.. it's not Trac. (Trac is crazy hard to install in our
one-click framework. Crazy hard for me at least.)
It's this possibly interesting new project for collaborating on projects
and stuff. It's under very active development (v0.6) and the website is:
http://www.activecollab.com/
The fact that activecollab.com is now hosted at DreamHost is honestly a
coincidence. And some might say foolhardy.
One-click your way to:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer
And collaborate actively with those you actively collaborate with the
most. Just not me right now, I'm feeling a little anti-collaborative. Or
rather, pro-isolative.
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3. Disk/Transfer status bars.
Just because there are no exclamation marks doesn't mean there can't be
any status bars.
Which is why there are now two humble little gauges along the left side
of our web panel:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/
That tell you how much disk and data transfer you've used out of your
quota.. as well as how much your quota is growing each week.
It's just a quick way to see a high-level summary of where you're at.
Just a wild stab.. you're at 0.1%.
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4. Auto-responder changes.
Just because we can't put an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence
doesn't mean we don't still hate spam. We hate spam. And even moreso, we
hate getting mislabeled as spammers ourselves and then blacklisted.
One of the big ways this happens is we pay a spammer to send out thirty
million unsolicited emails advertising our great hosting. That was a bad
idea. Okay, just kidding again. I'm just busting your chops, abuse team.
"Abusing" you, as it was. I'm sure you understand, you've all got such a
great sense of humor.
The other big way we realized we were getting blocked as a "spammer" was
our auto-responder system. For one, it was set to always send a response
even when the person receiving the email wasn't in the "To:" or "Cc:"
fields. This means if you had an autoresponder turned on and were on a
mailing list, and somebody posted to that mailing list, the whole list
might get your auto-response. This is called "back-splatter", and it's
also called "Dumb dumb dumb."
For two, people had auto-responders set up on catch-alls, which we
already know get a whole, whole, whole bunch of spam. And a lot of these
spams are from forged addresses.. which our auto-responders would then
email. The responses would then get reported as spam by unwashed
cretins, resulting in us being added to a spammer blacklist, resulting
in YOU being unable to send emails to certain addresses.
So anyway, we've stopped our spamming ways. People can no longer put
auto-responders on catch-alls, and we only send auto-responses if the
recipient was in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields.
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=mail.auto
It seems like maybe it's even started to work already.. we haven't been
blocked by SpamCop in a week or so. I'd give it another week.
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5. DHSOTM
Whoop-dee-doo. Another Month, another DreamHost Site of the Month. This
one is a little out of the ordinary however, as it's only HALF flash.
http://sircle.net/
is the personal site of Sanithna Phansavanh, an artist/designer who must
like it hot/muggy because he/she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
It's pretty and all that, but not worth using an exclamation point. Next
month I may be back to my disgustingly upbeat self, so if you want a
chance to get YOUR site essentially spammed to hundreds of thousands of
web hosted people like yourself, and with exclamation marks, submit it
now at:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm
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Boringly,
Josh Jones!
Oh crap. Well, now that the aura of desolation and despair has been
shattered, I totally understand if you want to unsubscribe. Do so here:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact
