We have always worked hard to provide the best hosting service you can get for the money and we’ve been pioneers in offering many unique features such as Jabber IM, WebDAV, Subversion, Phusion Passenger, and our One-Click Installer for popular web applications.  We love to play with all the newest Internet toys and provide them for you to play with also.  Our attention to all the “shiny new things” can sometimes distract us from the more fundamental aspects of our service, though, and that’s why…

The DreamHost New Year’s Resolution for 2010 is a renewed focus on performance and reliability.  Over the last few years, we have grown in leaps and bounds and our customers’ expectations of our service have grown along with it.  We have not always kept up with those expectations, and we need to put some energy into improving that.

Yesterday, I spent some time looking back at the past few years.  We’ve had our share of ups and downs and many of our loyal customers have stuck with us through it all.  We couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work for than you.  So, looking forward, we’re going to update our methods and systems to provide a more consistently high level of service.

Here’s some of the areas we’ve already improved on, and things we will be doing over the next several months…

• We are now using a more flexible storage system so we can easily keep up with your awesome demand for data storage.
• Additionally, our open-source next generation file system called Ceph is coming along nicely and will provide a great platform for our network storage needs in the future.
• A lot of work has been done over the past year on optimizing and better organizing our network infrastructure.  Everything being done is laying the groundwork for major future improvements in the works.
• By purchasing a major interest in Alchemy, our data center provider, we can rest easy knowing the relationship will be mutually beneficial for a long time.  Our system administrators are very happy to know that we will not be moving data centers again for the forseeable future.  We have plenty of spare data center space available and will be able to grow capacity at a comfortable pace.
• Our network connectivity has always been redundant but we’re going to kick that up another notch this year as we go multi-homed.  Once this is in place we’ll be able to withstand the loss an entire network point of presence without losing connectivity.
• We developed an internal system to help us manage individual server stability by improving communication and reducing wasted effort.
• We have deployed Ksplice Uptrack across our system, making mass server reboots for kernel security holes a thing of the past.  The Linux kernel has been hit with a couple of high profile security exploits in the past few months and we found ourselves scrambling to patch and reboot quickly.  Never again!
• We have a new mantra, “test, test, test”.  Some amount of testing has always been part of our procedures, but we are now making testing a fundamental component.
• Increased focus is being put on optimizing our procedures at all levels to reduce duplicated effort and errors, while also increasing accountability.  This is not something that happens overnight and it will be an ongoing process.

Having now solved our most distracting problems from the recent past, DreamHost is now positioned to tackle the future better than at any time in our history.  It won’t be easy but we have the best team in the business and a few new tricks up our sleeves on top of it.  And with that, we wish you all a very happy new year and a great 2010 (twenty-ten!).

As the end of the decade approaches, it’s a perfect time to look back and reflect on the past.  What has gone wrong and what has gone right?  We have a way of making waves, even if not always in the way we might like.  Here’s some reflections on some of those waves.

Power

Starting about 4 years ago, we were battling a problem of power constraints at our data center.  That led to a general inability to provision data center space the way we wanted to and we had to become very creative to manage our system.  The biggest problems from that time were two unplanned power outages of the entire building followed by an emergency planned outage 8 months later.  Power is one of the lifelines of a data center and not being able to rely on it can be a major distraction.  It was during that period that we established our off network status site (dreamhoststatus.com), which has proven to be a great asset.  Those issues are long behind us now, and looking forward we have plenty of power capacity.

Network

Pretty much in the middle of the power situation we were also hit with a networking problem between our two core routers that was causing serious website slowness.  We had grown so quickly that nobody really understood exactly how the network devices were interacting.  That combined with the distraction of the power situation made it take way too long to resolve the problem.  From that, we learned the hard way what we needed to do to improve and maintain the network.  Things have improved, but we were still recently hit with a couple network outages.  They were caused by human errors and weaknesses in the procedures we had in place.  We have already refined those procedures and future improvements to the networking infrastructure will also help to mitigate the potential for human error to result in outages.  This is still very much a work in progress but huge steps have been taken already and more are still to come.

Data Storage

The next major hurdle we faced involved our data storage infrastructure.  In the early days we had migrated from disks inside each server to network attached storage for the added redundancy and to allow us to better utilize our available storage.  At that time hard drives were only 9 gigabytes and our users were generally only using a hundred megabytes or less of space.  Boy, have things changed!  We now have users with multiple terabytes of data and even everyday websites sometimes have multiple gigabytes of files.  The huge growth of online video and the popularity of digital photography increased the demands on our storage infrastructure by a couple orders of magnitude over the years.  To accommodate that growth, our simple system of file servers had grown to a large network of over 100 individual servers that we had to constantly juggle data between.  The cost per gigabyte for our Network Appliance based system had also not come down nearly as fast as the per-user storage requirements had gone up, but we had become reliant on network storage for things such as backups, rapid recovery from server failures, and seamless sharing of data between separate hosting and email accounts.  We were addicted to network storage, and our next couple of major performance problems came from gloriously failed experiments with other storage products.  One of them was cheap and unreliable, and the other was expensive and unreliable.  We couldn’t win!  (Note that we haven’t used either of those for awhile so both of them may work better now than they did for us a couple of years ago.)

Through those years that our addiction to network storage had developed, a shift had happened that we hadn’t noticed.  First, individual hard drives had dropped like a rock in price and skyrocketed in capacity.  Second, users were consuming data at such a rate that evenly utilizing our available storage was no longer a problem.  Switching back to locally installed storage was the answer we had been looking for!  We started experimenting with the new server architecture and developing a backup strategy.  Then once the pieces were all in place, we started moving forward with it.  So the storage bottleneck was resolved and we had a clear path forward, but we were still throwing out a lot of knowledge we had learned over the preceding decade and were starting over from scratch in a lot of ways.  With every technology shift comes with it a new set of problems and this one was no exception.  It’s been about a year and a half since then and we’re already on our fourth revision of the server configuration (three different RAID cards with two different configs).  The current hardware has been working out quite well but we’re doing some testing to see if it can be optimized further.

Looking into next year, our core technology systems are under control and we’ll be able to focus more on improving the service than we have in years.  The future looks very bright…. but more on that tomorrow!

I’m a big fan of holiday advent calendars where you open up one of the doors each day in December and get some sort of little prize as you count down the days to your favorite winter-time holiday.  In fact, last year I asked my wife to get me one… and she did!  She filled it up with all kinds of chocolatey goodies and I was a happy days-until-my-favorite-winter-time-holiday-counter-downer all through most of the month of December.  So, sort of like that, but not every day and not as chocolatey and not really actually holiday related, we have something new for you! …  Slick integration with the Chartbeat real-time analytics service into the DreamHost Web Control Panel.  Chartbeat provides real-time information about the visitors to your website, including what they are doing, which pages they are visiting, and what parts of the pages they are looking at.  It also goes beyond that and incorporates information from other parts of the web like twitter so you can gain even more insight into where visitors are coming from and what they’re saying about you.  I’ve been using Chartbeat for this blog for the past month or so and it’s actually made boring old web stats fun and interesting again.  It’s a unique look at your visitors that I had never seen before.  The iPhone app with push notifications is slick, too.

Chartbeat is a paid service that you can order straight from the DreamHost Web Control Panel, and there’s a 30 day free trial so you can give it a go and see what you think.  The Chartbeat team would love to hear comments from our users so give it a try even if you don’t think you’d end up using it.  You may be surprised to find you use it more than you thought you would!

For some of you, it’s that time of the year again.. holiday shopping!

I say some of you not because some of you are not Christian, Jewish, African, or employed, but because some of you are not early holiday shoppers.

For those of us already finished with our seasonal purchases, it’s that time of the year again.. holiday sleeping!

Now, when I was young, early holiday shopping meant at least ONE of the big boxes under the tree wasn’t filled with an “I O U: 1 Cobra Terror Drome – SANTA!” But nowadays, thanks to the influences of my lovely spouse, I’ve been able to get all my shopping (apart from gifts for her) done E A R L Y.

What’s my secret?

It’s easy!

She gets everything! Her family, my family, her friends, my friends, everything! The only thing I have to get IS my gifts for her!

And man, she starts EARLY. Like, it’s an all year thing. If she sees something that would be perfect for my brother in May, BOOM she buys it for Christmas. If she finds a sweater on sale in February that would look great on her mom… POW bought and stored. If she comes across an amazing deal on Zhu Zhu Hamsters December 26th.. well, they’ll probably still be popular next holidays too, right?

It’s weird. I mean, compared to how I was brought up (which I’m 100% sure is the norm) it’s down-right un-American. But, I’ve slowly come around. Sadly, I’ve started to find myself buying things in the spring with an eye towards December. And not just me.. DreamHost too!

Remember in the last post when I mentioned how we bought (some of) Alchemy Communications back in May? Well, here it is, December, and that forward thinking is finally starting to pay off… for you!

In honor of our new relationship (and by using ex-DreamHost shared hosting servers) Alchemy has just started offering Dedicated Servers at pretty much the best deal you can get anywhere (we checked!):

We got our holiday traveling done early this year!

While everybody else is stuck spending the night at the airport, trying to figure out how to best spend their $15 meal voucher, catching H1N1 from the crazy pig farmer snoring next to them, all the DreamHost servers are going to be snug as a bug in a lug in their NEW CAR!

I mean NEW DATA CENTER!

That’s right, we (more or less) completed the mother of all DreamHost data center moves this last week, and if you’ve been with us more than a couple of months, you know the mother of all DreamHost moves must have been a DOOZY.

In the last decade or so, we’ve probably moved data centers an average of once a year… let’s see, there’s been:

CyberG8T => caput (we called them “CyberGate-tuh”)
Commotion => caput
SoftAware => acquired by Digital Island
Digital Island => acquired by Cable and Wireless
WebVision => caput
Exodus => acquired by Cable and Wireless
Cable and Wireless => IPOed and got lame
Switch and Data => IPOed and got lame
Alchemy => still there!
NaviSite => dumped their LA data center on Net2EZ
Net2EZ => we just moved out!

We’ve moved data centers for a multitude of reasons, but we always knew in our heart of hearts “this is the LAST time”.

Recently it’s become hard, harder, and even MORE harder to do these moves. Not just because we’re getting old and flabby, but because servers in general are getting smellier as well as more sharp and covered in razor blades.

Not really. Really because the number of servers has become more, more-er and even MORE more-er-er! In fact, we’re a little bit of an oddity among colocation customers. We’re a big customer, but we’re very price conscious (because unlike say a law firm, colo for us is a variable cost) … and usually in business when that’s the case you vertically integrate.

We’ve been considering getting our own data center for several years actually! It just never quite made sense. We just weren’t quite big enough to justify the humungo capital outlays, and we just didn’t quite have any expertise in the electricity and cooling side of things. And besides, the market for colo had gotten so soft that the prices we were getting from all the competing providers made it REALLY not worth getting our own.

Of course, those prices are always “introductory”… and once that initial contract is up, they know they’ve got you hooked and it’s time to jack up the rates!

Which is why we went into the Garland Building in the first place… I figured with four competing colo providers all on the same floor, we could always play them off of each other; threatening to move down the hall if one didn’t match a competitor’s offer.

That worked, more or less. Of course, sometimes they called your bluff, and it was time to put up or shut up, and actually go ahead and move those half-ton racks of servers down the hall!

Never ones to be stared down, we got pretty good over the years at moving data centers. In fact, being unafraid to move data centers may actually have turned out to be one of our biggest competitive advantages.

Of course, it may have been one of our biggest distractions too. Moving data centers has become such a huge deal that the planning for moving even just a third of our footprint now occupies our entire system admin team for the better part of a year.

Which is why 2009 marked the year in which DreamHost, web master of so many’s domains, finally became masters of their OWN domain… by taking a large equity stake in our primary data center facility, Alchemy Communications!

We consummated the deal back in May, and since then have been planning (and carrying out) the move out of Net2EZ and into what is, finally, our “own” data center. The climax of which occurred this Saturday when we finally physically moved out the remaining now-defunct “spunky” servers out to the data center we have at LAX.

Just in time for them to catch all their flights home for the holidays. And the flu.

P.S. I’d like to acknowledge all the great work Micah, Patrick, Jeremy K., Mike H., Jordan, Mike P., Terri, Jeremy H., Kyle, RK, Leon, Douglas, Brett, Sandon, Robert, Anthony, and Ken did in making this quite possibly our best and quite possibly our last move ever!

We held a t-shirt design contest not too long ago and the response was overwhelming.

After wading through hundreds of entries we’ve finally narrowed down the winners. We assigned each entry a year representative of its style – one for each year we’ve been in business. Every DreamHost employee was then given a chance to vote for their favorites and the top performers for each decade are as follows:

1940s, Andrea:

1950s, Ken Grett:

1960s, Gabriel Mello:

1970s, Brian:

1980s, CSEID:

1990s, Jeffrey Dates:

2000s, Pushka Ben:

Every one of these entries has won their creators a lifetime of free hosting from DreamHost!

You can purchase any of these printed on a shirt (or mug…or apron…or mousepad) right now in our online store!

You can also purchase some of our other favorite entries from the contest that didn’t quite make the cut – and there are nearly 60 of them!

Because we were so impressed with all the entries we received, all of the runners-up (designs in the store that aren’t listed above) will be getting a free year of hosting!

We would have liked to announce the winners much sooner, but a lot of them aren’t big on the whole “answer important emails” thing, and it took some time to get everyone’s artwork and legal paperwork collected.

We’re still waiting to hear back from several of the winners, so you won’t be able to purchase everything you see in the store just yet. If YOUR artwork appears in the store with a “NOT FOR SALE” icon, now might be a good time to check your spam filters for the several messages I’ve sent you!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! Now…

For some reason .info is the only TLD besides .com/net/org that we offer for registration (of course you can host any domain) at DreamHost.

They were just one of the first “new” TLDs I suppose. Back before we got burnt out on them all.

Of course, there were a few people who got burnt by .info domains themselves… by the .info sunrise period, more specifically. The .info registry themselves!

I just got an email this morning that Afilias (the .info registry) will be reallocating a bunch of .info domains (see the end of this post for the full list) that were somehow “incorrectly” registered during their sunrise period many years ago.

I don’t know what comprises “incorrectly” .. maybe they just mean “squattedly” but the upshot is you can now submit an application to get one or more of the domains by filling out this form and emailing it as a PDF as well as mailing a paper copy with a check for $250 to

Attn: Sunrise Reallocation RFP
Afilias Limited
c/o Afilias USA, Inc.
300 Welsh Road, Bldg 3, Ste. 105
Horsham, PA 19044
USA

by December 22nd.

You’ve got to put on the application why want the domain(s) you’re going after, and I guess they’re just going to pick whomever is most “deserving”. Or their cousin.

I just thought this was kind of interesting because Afilias is opening themselves up to a whole lotta sour grapes from all the cyber squatters who don’t get the domains they wanted. And in the end all that changes is Afilias makes a lot of $250 application fees and new and different cyber squatters get the domains!

The only way I can think of to make this fair is to just randomly assign the domains among all applications. Or, if they really want to hold editorial control over who gets them, the criteria should be that the requester already be running an active website on a similar domain, that they then agree to relinquish over to Afilias in return for the .info domain they will start using in its stead.

Then I could swap information.la for losangeles.info!

114.info
24seven.info
3bo.info
401k.info
4-best.info
4flow.info
4runner.info
88edibleoil.info
aar.info
aar-treuhand.info
abenteuer.info
abfs.info
accessgroup.info
acousticwavemusicsystem.info
acousticwavemusicsystem.info
adata.info
adizesgraduateschool.info
adizesinstitute.info
adizesusa.info
aegonassetmanagement.info
aei.info
airline.info
airzone.info
alava.info
albacete.info
alicante.info
all.info
allergy.info
allianz-arena.info
allinfo.info
almeria.info
alte-leipziger-bauspar.info
alte-leipziger-holding.info
alte-leipziger-institut.info
amade.info
ameda.info
america.info
americantower.info
americantown.info
americantowns.info
amtrack.info
anchorage.info
andalucia.info
aniscastellana.info
anis-castellana.info
antalya.info
antiquitaeten.info
apartments.info
aqua.info
aquaculture.info
aragon.info
arthritis.info
arucana.info
asbestos.info
askamd.info
askthedude.info
asn.info
aspen.info
assetweb.info
asturias.info
athlon.info
athritis.info
auction.info
australien.info
auto.info
autoengineer.info
automation.info
autorouter.info
autos.info
aveny.info
aviation.info
avila.info
avnetexpress.info
avondale.info
ayurveda.info
a-z.info
baaworldpoints.info
bachelor.info
badajoz.info
badgirls.info
badwesternkotten.info
bahn.info
bairstow.info
baleares.info
baltimoresun.info
balve.info
bambinchen.info
bamboo.info
banff.info
bangkok.info
bank.info
bankshot.info
bargain.info
bargains.info
baseball.info
basell.info
bassfishing.info
bauernherbst.info
baukosten.info
bauzirkel.info
bdiu.info
beauty.info
beavercreek.info
bedandbreakfast.info
bedding.info
beer.info
beinhart.info
benetone.info
bettersex.info
bible.info
bier.info
big.info
bikehotels.info
bilbao.info
bisex.info
bit.info
blick.info
blinddater.info
blinds.info
blinds2go.info
bluetooth.info
boat.info
body.info
bollywood.info
bolsa.info
bonds.info
books.info
boot.info
bosecorporation.info
boston.info
boxoffice.info
branchenbuch.info
brauerei.info
braunschweig.info
bravoscreenfun.info
bregenzerwald.info
bremen.info
briefmarken.info
brigitte.info
britishamericantabacco.info
brixen.info
broadway.info
brotherhoodmutual.info
browser.info
brustkrebs.info
buchner.info
buffalo.info
buffaloboots.info
buffalo-boots.info
buildermarts.info
bunactravelservices.info
burgos.info
buydomain.info
buymine.info
byte.info
byteburg.info
caceres.info
cadiz.info
calciwise.info
caldaro.info
calence.info
calendar.info
california.info
camelotgroup.info
camelot-group.info
campingtirol.info
can.info
canarias.info
cancer.info
cargo.info
carpediem.info
cartagena.info
cas.info
casilan.info
casinos.info
castellon.info
catalunya.info
catelli.info
cbt.info
cellatlas.info
cellularphone.info
cerebys.info
certainteed-design.info
ceuta.info
charcol.info
charity.info
chat.info
chatrooms.info
cheapnights.info
chef.info
chemnitz.info
chemotherapie.info
chicagosports.info
chienes.info
childrensplace.info
chocolate.info
cholanhmb.info
cholan-hmb.info
cholesterol.info
christ.info
city.info
clearwindow.info
click4.info
click411.info
clinicaltrials.info
closs.info
clpcrowntechnicalservices.info
cms.info
coating.info
coburg.info
cocoapro.info
coins.info
cold.info
coldfusion.info
colfosco.info
colorado.info
colorcases.info
combipatch.info
comfortedgetechnology.info
comfortline.info
comfortpro.info
companyguru.info
companyinsight.info
computer.info
concrete.info
consulting.info
contender.info
copenhagen.info
cornwall.info
corp.info
corvara.info
costablanca.info
costabrava.info
costadelsol.info
craft.info
crbliss.info
creditcards.info
crown.info
crowntechnical.info
crowntechnicalservices.info
cruise.info
csi.info
cuenca.info
cyberdog.info
cyclotran.info
cygate.info
dachdecker.info
dagehtsmirgut.info
dairylicious.info
datadepot.info
dataflux.info
dateline.info
datingagency.info
dealdesk.info
deal-desk.info
deltaview.info
dental.info
denver.info
depression.info
depressionen.info
desenexmax.info
devies.info
dial-a-tech.info
diet.info
digital.info
digitaltimes.info
digitalvideo.info
directimagingcenter.info
direct-imaging-center.info
direktmarketing.info
dis.info
discounts.info
distancelearning.info
dobbiaco.info
doccontrol.info
doctor.info
doctors.info
dolcevita.info
dolomiten.info
dolomiti.info
door.info
dortmund.info
dotweb.info
dowagro.info
dowagrosciences.info
dowchemical.info
dowchemicalcompany.info
driveweb.info
druckmaschinen.info
dsl.info
dsv-saaten.info
duplium.info
durasolv.info
ear.info
earlydefense.info
earth.info
easytrade.info
ebank.info
ebia.info
ecitizen.info
economic.info
economics.info
ecopower.info
ediligence.info
edisonelectricinst.info
e-epoxy.info
e-fficiency.info
e-flood.info
eggdesign.info
egger.info
eggerwirt.info
egggroup.info
egginteractive.info
eisacktal.info
ejgallo.info
elearning.info
election.info
electric-blue.info
elevator.info
e-mail.info
energie.info
enews.info
eng.info
engineering.info
envigor.info
enviroment.info
envision.info
epilepsyaction.info
epoxy.info
equicareanddesign.info
erci.info
erektion.info
eres.info
ergo.info
eroski.info
escorts.info
etickets.info
etop.info
eucaris.info
eurekaconnection.info
eva.info
event.info
everlux.info
everything.info
e-watch.info
excact.info
exhibitions.info
exiban30.info
eyeclinic.info
eyewitness.info
fact.info
family.info
farmacia.info
farmbureauconnection.info
fashion.info
fedcup.info
feesten.info
fengshui.info
ferienwohnungen.info
ferrum.info
finance.info
financialadvisor.info
financialservices.info
findlaw.info
fineliving.info
fingersnackers.info
fish4cars.info
fish4jobs.info
fishing.info
flashlight.info
flexiblelogic.info
flexible-logic.info
flight.info
flkeys.info
floodwise.info
florida.info
flowers.info
flualert.info
flute.info
fmb.info
focalpoint.info
focuscomfortchallenge.info
focuscomforttrial.info
focusdayplus.info
focuseveryday.info
focusevery-day.info
focusexpress.info
foodinaminute.info
foodtv.info
foremost.info
forestbank.info
formentera.info
forsale.info
fostercare.info
franchise.info
frankfurt.info
frechdachs.info
freerider.info
freshfieldsbruckhaus.info
freshfields-bruckhaus-deringer.info
freshfieldsinternational.info
frijo.info
fristampumps.info
fuelcell.info
fuerteventura.info
fuerteventura.info
funday-times.info
furniture.info
fuschlamsee.info
fussball.info
futbol.info
futurephoto.info
galaxy.info
gamble.info
gambler.info
gambling.info
game.info
games.info
gapyear.info
gardengigglers.info
gazoline.info
gbg.info
gems.info
general.info
generika.info
genetics.info
genimap.info
gentleflex.info
geologie.info
geriatrie.info
getpacking.info
getsmartgetnextel.info
ghostgum.info
giancarlofisichella.info
giebel.info
gifts.info
gilead.info
girona.info
glen-elgin.info
global.info
gloss.info
glucon-d.info
glycemet.info
glycerine.info
go2orlando.info
gochina.info
god.info
godwad.info
goforit.info
gold.info
goldcard.info
goldegg.info
goldlinecoins.info
goldlineinternational.info
goldschmuck.info
golf.info
golf-alpin.info
goodidea.info
goodluck.info
goodwear.info
government.info
grancanaria.info
gravisand.info
graz.info
green.info
greenfingers.info
grossarl.info
guadalajara.info
guipuzcoa.info
gutachter.info
haas.info
hairloss.info
halbleiter.info
halfar.info
handibites.info
handi-bites.info
handicrafts.info
hangseng.info
hangsengbank.info
hardrive.info
hartfordcourant.info
haug.info
haut.info
hautecouture.info
haute-couture.info
headache.info
health.info
healthcare.info
healthhouse.info
heartshape.info
hechtl.info
heindl.info
heinzezsquirt.info
heinzwatties.info
heitersheim.info
helios.info
hema.info
hennesmauritz.info
hepatitis.info
herpes.info
highfly.info
high-fly.info
hints.info
hiv.info
hjheinz.info
holeinone.info
holidayclub.info
home.info
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hophingedibleoil.info
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howbusinessgetsdone.info
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hypnosis.info
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ideas.info
idem.info
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ilxsystems.info
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inc500.info
independentliving.info
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industrialvision.info
indy.info
infanthealth.info
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information-systems-control-association.info
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inkasso.info
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joy.info
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last-minute-reisen.info
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macromedia.info
macway.info
madrid.info
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masterfoods.info
masterfoodservices.info
match.info
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medical.info
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mgcorp.info
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movies.info
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nexic.info
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oberbayern.info
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oberwart.info
office.info
oha.info
oil.info
olmetec.info
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onlineshop.info
only.info
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optometry.info
orlando.info
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ourense.info
overseaspracticaltraining.info
oxygen.info
pain.info
painting.info
palencia.info
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pamplona.info
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paris.info
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patent.info
pcb.info
peacock.info
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pediatrician.info
penguinputnam.info
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pension.info
pensionen.info
personeelscentrum.info
pestcontrol.info
pharmacy.info
pharoridanddesign.info
philately.info
phoenix.info
photomodell.info
physik.info
planet.info
platespin.info
player.info
playstation3.info
playstationcom.info
plescia.info
pneumo-star.info
polarbears.info
pollen.info
polyethylene.info
polyurethane.info
pontevedra.info
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power2learn.info
prague.info
praha.info
printmediaacademy.info
privatvermieter.info
privilege.info
prize.info
prof.info
profume.info
progirls.info
project.info
property.info
pro-same.info
protection.info
pspsi.info
psthree.info
qosfs.info
qsc.info
quietcomfort.info
quote.info
race.info
racines.info
rackmaster.info
radsport.info
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raj.info
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rasen.info
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rcn.info
rdw.info
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redcross.info
refractories.info
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reise.info
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rendite.info
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renon.info
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restaurant.info
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revshare.info
rheumatism.info
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riester-rente.info
ringier.info
rioja.info
ritten.info
ritz.info
riverheadbook.info
riverheadbooks.info
robitussin.info
rock.info
roplene.info
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rugby.info
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saalbach.info
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safe.info
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sexbet.info
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sexe.info
sexo.info
sexshop.info
sexten.info
shipping.info
shocktales.info
shop.info
shops.info
siam.info
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signaturebrands.info
signatures-catalog.info
signetbook.info
signetbooks.info
silicon.info
simpad.info
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smallbusiness.info
smhi.info
snapnstore.info
soccer.info
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social.info
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solution.info
somnu-star.info
somnu-starph.info
sonja.info
soria.info
sound.info
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sportsbook.info
sprachkurs.info
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springbreak.info
springfield.info
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stamps.info
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stationery.info
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std.info
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stemcells.info
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talentbuilder.info
talkers.info
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tarragona.info
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zentralschweiz.info
zevalin.info
zitate.info
zwickau.info

We had our annual Halloween party this Saturday, at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, famous from such movies as Pretty Woman, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Upscale Bangers 38.

Clearly, there were a lot of great costumes, none more betterer than the classic “Sunburned Surf Vampire”.

Well, there was one more betterer. We had a costume contest, and Javier’s ended up getting second place:

And first.

NOBODY else got a single vote!

(Please turn head to left to watch video.)

It had a cup holder!

Back in April, Yahoo announced that it would be closing GeoCities “later this year”.

Last week they set a date: October 26, 2009. One week from today!

This is your one-and-only reminder that DreamHost is offering two free years of hosting for GeoCities refugees. When the clock strikes midnight on the 26th, former GeoCities customers will lose access to their old accounts forever, and this offer from DreamHost will disappear for all eternity – buried at the bottom of the sea or melted in a nuclear apocalypse. (We haven’t decided yet.)

Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…hosting.

Today DreamHost turns 62 years old*! It’s hard to believe, but we’ve watched the hosting industry blossom and grow over the course of 62 grand years – that’s longer than any other web host in the industry. Some would say that’s older than the Internet itself, but they are MISINFORMED.

I was doing some digging in the DreamHost Archives and came across an old steamer trunk full of promotional materials dating back to the late 40s. There was a fair amount of water damage to the contents of the trunk, so much of what was in there has been lost to the elements. The good news is that I was able to salvage a few old photographs that hearken back to a simpler time.

The man with the glasses is one of my predecessors – the great James P. Abernathy III – DreamHost’s first marketing manager. He popularized the use of bumper stickers as promotional materials and is credited with making DreamHost the household name that it is today.

He died of venereal disease in 1953.

Early in our company’s history we realized the importance of buddying-up with famous people. Decades before the T-Mobile tent made its first appearance on the Academy Awards red carpet, the DreamHost milk truck was out in force delivering ice cold milk and promotional t-shirts to Hollywood’s elite.

It occurred to me that our company’s rich history need not spend an eternity buried in a steamer trunk, forever hidden from the prying eyes of the world. So we’re throwing a little contest to bring back the glory days of DreamHost.

Create your own retro-styled DreamHost t-shirt design to recapture the early days of web hosting as we know it. If we like yours enough we’ll turn it into actual t-shirts. Our employees will get them, people on the Internet will be able to buy them, and YOU’LL get a yearlifetime of free hosting! And mayyyyyybe even some copies of your own shirt! What the heck!

You don’t need to be a current customer to win. Just post a link to your entry (or entries) in the comments of this post. If you’re a winner you’ll need to be able to provide your artwork to us as a 200-300 dpi PNG file at a maximum size of 13.5″ x 16.5″. (Don’t forget the alpha channel data for any transparent areas.) File sizes must be no larger than 10 megs. Post an email address with your submission so that we can contact you if you’ve won and award you your prize!

Remember, this isn’t just a t-shirt design contest – this is a retro t-shirt design contest. Walk through a thrift store if you need inspiration. Ask anyone wearing a polo shirt what they think of your design – If they hate it, you’re probably on the right track!

The submission deadline is 11:59PM PST, Sunday October 11th. We’ll announce winners the following week – probably one from each “decade” (the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s). Feel free to take large liberties with the logo, taglines, etc. Good luck!

* Just kidding. We’re 12 today.

UPDATE: The winners have been announced!