Most Popular WordPress Plugins

A couple of months ago we collected some data on how many WordPress-powered sites we host.  We knew it had to be a pretty large amount because we see them constantly.  It turns out that we are hosting nearly 500,000 WordPress websites!  Out of about 1 million total domain names hosted, that means that almost half of them have at least one WordPress blog.  I knew it was a lot, but I didn’t expect it to be that many.  Crazy!

So, the next thing I thought was, “I wonder which plugins are the most popular among all of those WordPress users.”  Well, here’s the answer (the ones with ** are included by default)…

It’s not surprising to see 3 of the top 5 be some of our default plugins (we only enable either WP-Cache or WP-Supercache, not both), but it is surprising that some non-default plugins made it so high on the list.  For instance, Google Sitemap Generator is in use on nearly 12% of all of our WordPress sites!  That’s even more impressive when you consider that these numbers include our fully-managed easy one-click for WordPress, which don’t allow you to install your own plugins.  We didn’t break out how many of those there are, but there’s enough of them that it would skew the results.  I also found it amusing that nearly 2% of our WordPress blogs have the “Hello, Dolly” plugin enabled.  Statistics related plugins are popular as a group, with 5 of them making an appearance on the list.

What’s the Deal Apple?

Today apple approved a ping pong app for the iPhone and iPad.

Almost two years ago I made exactly the same app!

And it was rejected! And I know mine didn’t have any sort of iPad tie-in, but no fair, there WAS no iPad back then!

So I say, Apple, you’re slipping. And I say Ping Pong Battle, you are not worth $4.99! And finally, I say “pants!”

(I just hadn’t said it in a while.)

One Million Domains

Well it’s finally happened.

The stat-happy webhosting.info this month made it known that we now host over one million domains. A million!

That’s a lot!

I had a hard time visualizing “one million” so I turned to my old friend Google Image Search (with ‘resuse rights’ checked) and saw enough to make me realize that I really didn’t need to know what “one million” of anything looked like.

We wouldn’t be here without the support of our customers, employees (past and present!), and everyone in-between. So thank you!

By the way…if you worked here you would have found one of these on your desk this week:

Sweat your way to free hosting

Do you live near Los Angeles and enjoy pooping fire?

You’re in luck.

Next week a small contingent of DreamHost employees will be at Orochon Ramen to test your mettle!

Orochon is known for serving up big bowls of ramen that come in seven levels of spicy. In addition to those seven, there are two extreme levels of spiciness – known as Special #1, and Special #2 – the hottest.

You may have even seen the Special #2 featured on Food Network’s Man vs. Food.

If you can finish a bowl of Special #2 in less than 30 minutes they’ll put your picture on the wall.

And we’ll give you a year of free hosting!

Orochon Ramen doesn’t have a website (Really! In 2010!) but they do have a page on Yelp. Check out the menu and photos of what you’re in for.

We’ll see you there next Wednesday, June 2nd, at 7PM! If you plan to attend please RSVP on Facebook so that we’ll have a general idea of how many people to expect.

If you do manage to complete the challenge just look for anyone wearing a DreamHost shirt and let them know your account information – a year of free hosting will magically appear on your account shortly thereafter.

NOTE: DreamHost is not responsible for exploded organs, anal leakage, excess sweating, dry mouth, constricted airways, homicidal impulses, amnesia, decreased sexual interest, kidney failure, muscle weakness, erectile dysfunction, nerve damage, liver damage, male breast growth, or any other physical harm that may arise from consumption of food or drink during this event. Enter this contest at your own risk.

And please come prepared.

Yeah…about that downtime…

You may or may not have noticed that yesterday, www.dreamhost.com was offline and unreachable for the better part of 6 hours. We can’t let something like that go without an explanation.

I should note that during this time no customer sites were affected (other than one – which I’ll get to) and the main “www.dreamhost.com” domain. Customer sites were up, our web panel was up, everything was up…including the ire of some tech-savvy Muslims!

We’ve got a fairly liberal free-speech policy here which we’re quite proud of. Speech that is protected by the United States Constitution’s First Amendment is protected by DreamHost. While we don’t always agree with the content of the sites we host, we do support their right to host it in America!

Yesterday was Draw Mohammad Day.

This did not sit well with roughly 21% of the world’s population.

We happened to be hosting drawmuhammadday.com, a site that encouraged people to draw images of Mohammed. That’s kind of a no-no in the Muslim world.

Incidentally, did you know there’s like a million different ways to spell Mohammed?

In the spirit of yesterday’s event, but without the offensive parts, I’ve drawn some pictures to show you what you might have missed!

Some people weren’t too keen on the idea of the Draw Mohammad Day website and suddenly we were the target of the largest Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) we’ve ever seen. drawmuhammadday.com was the first to fall. It was the main target and it didn’t take long…based on our stats it looked like almost the entire country of Pakistan was attacking us! Well not really. But nobody in Pakistan could reach YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter yesterday, so what else were they gonna do?

These weren’t just random attacks from here and there. We saw several Pakistani groups targeting us on their blogs, often providing step-by-step directions and automated tools for launching e-assaults on dreamhost.com and drawmuhammadday.com.

They did not let up once the site was down. At one point dreamhost.com (the site itself) was handling around 20,000 requests per second. To put that number in perspective, when our customers’ sites have traffic surges a busy day might see that number get up to ten or even twenty.

Our load balancers, as great as they are, typically handle about 4,000 connections at any given moment. During the attack they made it up to 400,000 before they seized up and crapped out. We believe that even the most top-shelf battle-hardened load balancing options would not have been able to withstand an attack of this scale – a quick jump in traffic about 100x larger than normal traffic patterns we see on any given day.

Our fault-tolerant setup relied on those load balancers and they proved to be our undoing. Luckily only some services were affected by this for a very short time (webmail being one of them) before we got them going again a few minutes later.

To restore services we had to take the site down altogether while we moved it to newer, stronger hardware, beyond the reach of our load balancers. We tuned the Linux kernel on this new machine aggressively to use less memory for TCP connections. We also abandoned Apache, favoring a specialized nginx installation.

When we flipped the switch to get dreamhost.com up and running again at around 2PM PDT, the attack load had dropped to 130,000 simultaneous connections with over 20,000 requests per second. The new setup took it like a champ and continues to perform well today – even while we’re still seeing elevated traffic as a result of lingering attacks.

We’re proud to say (and repeat!) that customer sites were not affected and our control panel was still reachable during this entire debacle. And of course if you ever suspect server problems with your DreamHost account be sure to check dreamhoststatus.com!

We learned some lessons yesterday and, moving forward, we’re going to put them into practice. Thanks for hangin’ in there.

(not Mohammed)

Donations for April

February through April we solicited donations from our customers for a worthy organization: Home for Women and Children of Shiprock, New Mexico.

Home for Women and Children is a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter located on the Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico. They have served the entire Navajo reservation – which covers approximately 26,000 square miles – for 32 years. The program also serves all of the Four Corners area, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah.

32 of our customers made donations totaling $1193.60, which we then QUADRUPLED with our own money for a total donation of $4774.40. While our matching period may have ended, you can always submit donations to “HWC” directly. If you were one of those 32 generous souls – thank you.

Home for Women and Children joins a long list of non-profit organizations to which our customers have contributed over the past several years.

Current customers can visit the Home / Give to Charity section of their account control panel to submit donations at any time. The charge will appear on your next hosting bill and we’ll more-than-match anything you’re able to give, multiplying your own gift by a factor of four.

We’ve chosen to support The March of Dimes as our next donation target.

Their mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. They carry out this mission through research, community services, education and advocacy to save babies’ lives. March of Dimes researchers, volunteers, educators, outreach workers and advocates work together to give all babies a fighting chance against the threats to their health: prematurity, birth defects, and low birthweight.

Please consider making a donation if you haven’t already.

Thanks!

We’ve got 20 iPads…

…but not for long!

We’re giving them all away to twenty lucky entrants in our Apple-A-Day Twitter contest!

We had hoped to have these in our hands on the 3rd when everybody else did. Unfortunately Apple cancelled our first order, probably as a result of us ordering twenty when the stated limit was TWO. The credit card we originally used had also been cancelled thanks to the recent Monoprice fiasco by the time Apple was ready to charge it, so that probably didn’t go over very well either…

The good news is we were able to sneak in another order – and that one went through without a problem – and arrived today!

Bingo!

We unpacked 15 iPads, but the fourth box had a note…

Just kidding. I put that there. But it got your heart rate up a little, right?

So what can you actually do with 20 iPads? Quite a lot, actually!

There’s the obligatory doorstop.

Dominoes came to mind as well…

Playing chess on a touchscreen is like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

20 iPads have no problem giving someone bad news.

iPad/crowbar batting practice was a hit!

I’ve played a lot of bowling apps on my iPhone.

This one makes you feel like you’re really there!

The iPad talks a good game, but when it comes time to play a little Call of Duty, he falls flat.

Trash talking only works when you’re good at something. PUNK.

I’ll be honest – the iPad was much better at playing drums in Rock Band than I was. Had some problems hitting the pedal though.

With the day wearing on I decided that maybe nobody would realize if a few iPads went missing. So I thought it might be a good idea to swallow a few and sneak them out that way.

It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t successful.

The following Twitter users have won a 16GB Wifi iPad:
mrwickedd
enotsola
rafaldyrda
mike_Henderson
raimon49
feltpad
caoanroad4800
daniloeu
omtc
jbchan
twEapen
Onlera
emberna
mattmaher
MinaNJ
lisadrowe
LauraRogner
pkimbrel
benrwoodard
eminsker

If you’re listed above, CONGRATULATIONS! – and be on the lookout for a message from @dreamhost. We’re going to need some shipping information from you!

Winners must reply to @dreamhost on Twitter no later than May 14th at 11:59PM, PDT (one month from today) or they will forfeit their prize. At that time we will pick from the other entries received to select alternate winners. We don’t want to hold on to these things forever!

No iPads were harmed or removed from shrink wrap in the making of this blog post.

UPDATE 5/17/2010: We made several attempts to contact all winners and did not receive replies from four of them. The following Twitter users had not claimed their iPads by the deadline and have forfeited their prizes:
raimon49, Onlera, mattmaher, LauraRogner
So we’ve had to select four alternates. They are:
moonlettuce, JustCallMeJenni, samanatrix, john_blanton

Congratulations! The four alternate winners have until May 31st at 11:59PM, PDT to claim their prizes, after which point we’ll select MORE alternates if need be.

UPDATE 5/28/2010: All iPads have now been claimed. Thanks everyone for entering!

iPad: iGlad or iSad?

Well, our contest should be up.

I mean, the iPad came out a week ago. And the contest said it’d end when we got 20 (16GB wifi models). So, we must have them by now.

You’d think.

Well, I’m not sure what the hold up is. I mean, *I* got one no problem on launch day. I don’t know why *YOU* guys haven’t yet. Of course, I had to pay for mine.

So don’t complain. Or if you do, don’t do it on twitter. Or if you do, don’t use the “fail”. I’m sure we’ll have our prize iPads in hand this week, and the winners will be announced soon thereafter!

In The Meantime

I thought I might as well give my early hands-on review of the device. After all, who doesn’t want to know what Internet-pundit extraordinaire Josh Jones thinks about everything?

iGlad:

* the battery does seem to last a really long time.
* and yet, it’s zippier than an iPhone 3GS… playing Katamari on it is radical.
* it’s good for games for sure. To me, Flight Control HD is worth the $503.99 all on its own!
* for now, it’s still a chick magnet.

iBad:

* I’m still a newb, but so far I still type faster on the iPhone keyboard. Grrr.
* it’s new and so are the apps .. sometimes the wifi doesn’t auto-reconnect, and sometimes apps crash.
* old iPhone apps do not all work perfectly. For example, NBA league pass crashes when trying to watch any video, and bobby universal remote doesn’t respond when you push any button.
* it’s heavier than you expect. After using it for a while, try picking up your iPhone. You’ll throw it through the ceiling.
* it’s awkward to use when sitting at a table. Or on a couch. It’s kind of hard to prop up on things… and nobody’s really going to watch an entire episode of Lost on a 1.5 pound tablet they’re holding in their hands.
* you can’t download .epub files from Safari straight into iBooks… you have to download them to your computer, import them into iTunes, then sync them with your iPad… the iPad in general still requires a real computer.
* at current prices, the magazine and newspaper apps are not too “game-changing.” They cannot charge $5 an issue for a digital version of Popular Science! Whether it’s rational or not, people feel like a sucker paying the same price for a digital periodical as they do a paper one. They won’t spend $5 on a digital issue of something they can get a year’s paper subscription of for $12.

So?

I’d say it’s definitely a “third device” .. one that’s not going to replace cell phones or laptops. At least not until somebody makes a case for it like this Lenovo thing:

That, along with multi-tasking in iPhone OS 4.0 (due in September on the iPad), could potentially make it a laptop replacement for some people. An easy-to-use, sub-two-pound, 10-hour-battery-life, instant-on laptop for $500!

Hmm, in fact, some guy’s already working on the iPad LapDock. Hopefully it isn’t going to stay made of wood?! I wouldn’t put it past him. Jackass.

But as is, the iPad is still a pretty fun gadget! I’d pretty much describe it as a “toy” for now… one your spouse, your parents, your teenage kids and your toddlers are all going to want for Christmas. And by December, the combination of new peripherals, apps, and the OS update are going to make the iPad a legit netbook killer to boot.

Speaking of New Apps

Well, it’s not exactly an App (yet), but one thing I realized about a week before the iPad launched was how perfect it was going to be for children’s books.

Thanks to the Kindle, this eBook thing is starting to take life, but so far the children’s eBook thing is stillborn, due to the Kindle’s e-ink screen. On the other hand an iPad, with it’s full-color display, multi-touch capabilities, and uncanny resemblance to every child’s favorite device, is just right for them!

Which is why I whipped up ePub Bud!

It’s basically “YouTube for Children’s eBooks” (right down to the logo)… which means you can use it to upload, create, and share children’s books for the iPad (or any other ebook reader that supports the open .ePub format)!

What can you do with ePub Bud?

1. Write your own children’s ebook, and illustrate it with pictures you upload or choose from 20,000 free images.. then share it with the world or just your own family!

2. Browse through thousands of free children’s books others have written or uploaded, and download them to your iPad, read them from your browser, or save them to your laptop.

3. Upload your existing ebooks in any unencrypted format and have them converted to the .epub file format for loading onto your iPad (.epub is the only format the iBooks can currently read)!

4. Mail us your physical children’s books and we’ll digitize them for free into an .epub file… the book world equivalent of “ripping” your CDs to your iPod!

5. Finally, besides rating, tagging, and commenting on books, you can even create a new “edition” of any book on ePub Bud, allowing you to edit it to your own liking. Translate it to another language, put in alternative illustrations, or just fix a typo… it’s like wikipedia meets eBooks!

So that’s it, go get you some free children’s books for the iPad today!

You don’t actually need an iPad to read or contribute. And I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, but….. it works for non-children’s books too.

Though you might as well get an iPad now. You’ll have one by December 26th anyway.

Datacenter Innovation from DreamHost

Today we’re revealing some never-before seen photos of some of the darkened corners of our datacenters.

It’s not something we’re proud of, but we intend to do something about it.

You network admins know how it is. Sometimes a server dies and it’s just easier to leave it there and reuse its network cable without rerouting everything. And sometimes it’s just too hard to put a new cable in the channel where it belongs so you end up draping it over the top of everything. It’s easy, it works, and your customers never need to know about it.

Before you know it your hardware is buried in a sea of cables and has become physically unreachable.

Let’s face it. Datacenters are kind of boring. The only major cosmetic change they’ve gotten over the past twenty years has been the size of the computers sitting in them. And maybe the colors of the cables running through them.

We’ve today announced a new initiative : Wireless Datacenters.

At our Los Angeles datacenter we’ve replaced literally thousands of miles of cat5, cat6, and fiber with a large supply of 802.11n USB wireless dongles. Everywhere you look you’ll find dongles dangling everywhere. Dangling dongles. (Internally this project was codenamed “Dang Dongs“.)

We’ve donated all of our old cabling to a local recycler, and the amount of clutter we’ve eliminated in our datacenter is phenomenal. You can now walk through the entire facility without tripping or fear of passing under a cable avalanche.

We’ve also reduced our carbon footprint by a huge amount. Do you have any idea how many trees it takes to make a 6 foot ethernet cable? Probably not very many…but still. Having less stuff generally means you’ve used fewer resources to make that stuff. It’s really a win-win all around.

Ethernet entanglements are now a thing of the past. 802.11n wireless is the future, and the future is now.

In fact it says right here on the box from Linksys that the new router we bought will “stream stored music to devices around your home” – no small feat. Imagine how fast it’ll serve your websites. Should be pretty great.

You can expect a white paper and some more photos of the new deployment soon.

Ceph in the Linux kernel!

As of today, Linus has decided to merge our Ceph distributed file system into 2.6.34!

Awesome.