The Happy DreamHost 62nd Birthday Contest!

September 21, 2009 on 4:16 pm | In Funnyish, Promotions by Brett | 478 Comments

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!

The Traveler

September 16, 2009 on 1:07 pm | In New Features, Rants by Josh Jones | 20 Comments

Oh, I’ve been around.

And not just the block, and not just the bend.

I’ve been to like, 49 U.S. states. And like, 38 countries. And I know cause like, I’ve got a spreadsheet.

And I’ve seen some crazy crapola on those travels.

I’ve seen it rain for three days straight in Riyadh and sunny for three minutes straight on Mount Wai’ale’ale. I’ve seen an entire baseball stadium of Japanese people pack out their trash, and I’ve had my balls grabbed by a Chinese guy in a panda suit.

But there’s one thing I’ve never seen, not once in this whole wide, wild world.

An International Domain Name (IDN)

Not once.

Apparently, at some registrars you can register things like お元気ですか.com … and they’ll actually work in web browsers! Maybe even some email clients?

Silly-ly, the way it works is kind of silly… it actually just translates お元気ですか.com into a regular ascii domain like xn--t8jc5b1c114xnw7a.com … and that is what actually shows up in the browser bar (at least in most browsers)!

Anyway, we always thought that was so silly that we never bothered offering IDN registration at DreamHost. We do of course allow hosting IDN domains with us (you just enter the domain into our panel as xn--t8jc5b1c114xnw7a.com or whatever), and currently host over 4,000 of them.

We just thought actually registering them was a lot of work for not a lot of gain.

A lot of work?

What’s so hard about it? Shouldn’t we be able to register xn--t8jc5b1c114xnw7a.com just like any other .com domain? What extra set up is there?

You’d think that! In fact, I’d think that too!

But no, the registries all require us registrars to specifically activate the ability to register IDNs … and when submitting them we also have to submit what language they’re in!

Why this matters is beyond me. In fact, when you register .com and .net domains, you have a choice of over 100 languages, and they don’t seem to really care what you pick most of the time. However, when you register .org and .info domains you have a choice of only 10 languages, and they’re an odd selection, and they do care.

Those ten languages are: Danish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish.

Notice any missing? Let’s see, here are the world’s ten most “popular” languages, by native-speaking population:

1. Mandarin Chinese – 882 million (nope)
2. Spanish – 325 million
3. English – 312-380 million (N/A)
4. Arabic – 206-422 million (nope)
5. Hindi – 181 million (nope)
6. Portuguese – 178 million (nope)
7. Bengali – 173 million (nope)
8. Russian – 146 million (nope)
9. Japanese – 128 million (nope)
10. German – 96 million

For crying out loud, they don’t even have FRENCH! Not that I blame them, nyuk nyuk!!

What The Heck

Despite all these short-comings and dubious benefits, we’ve decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and start registering IDNs anyway!

So go crazy… simply visit our registrations area and enter whatever crazy (utf-8 encoded) characters you want … followed by .com (or .net/.org/.info)!

Of course, you still can’t register domains with spaces in them, REALLY weird utf-8 characters, or mix between left-to-right languages and right-to-left languages. And as I mentioned before, .org and .info are practically useless.

So what I mean to say is, taking into consideration those caveats, go crazy!!

And watch out for Chinese guys in panda suits.

Update Your Wordpress!

September 6, 2009 on 11:17 pm | In Dreamhost Apps, Insider View, Rants by Dallas Kashuba | 11 Comments

We’re big fans of Wordpress here at DreamHost.  It powers this website and many of our own personal websites.  It’s also probably the number one most popular web application running on our servers.

It’s so popular in fact that it’s increasingly become the target of security exploits.  Fortunately for all of us, the Wordpress coders have done a good job patching up security holes quickly once they’ve been discovered.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter one bit if you don’t update the copy of Wordpress running your website.

If you are a lucky DreamHost customer, installing and updating Wordpress is very easy.  You really have no excuse for not updating.

We provide a one-click installer and upgrader for Wordpress (and several other popular web applications) making it as simple as clicking a button in our web panel.  We even let you request that we email you whenever a new release is available so you don’t have to keep track of it yourself.

If that is still too much effort and you are willing to give up some flexibility, we also provide what we call an easy one-click installer, which is really just a fully managed and hosted version of Wordpress that we update and maintain for you.  Even better, you can get this service from us absolutely free from DreamHost Apps (which also includes a bunch of other popular web apps for the same $0 price tag).

Why Not?

The only reason I can think of to not upgrade Wordpress as soon as it is released is the worry that it will break some plugin you’re using.  While that is a very valid concern, you should really consider how much those pesky plugins are worth to your website.  Are they worth the days of time it might take you to clean up a hacked website?  Are they worth the shame you would feel if your hacked website is used as a base to infect hundreds or thousands of other websites?  These are very real risks.  If you are using a plugin that prevents you from easily upgrading your Wordpress install, please consider abandoning it or finding a replacement that’s more robust and compatible.

Do It!

So, long story short:  UPDATE YOUR WORDPRESS RIGHT NOW. There is a major Wordpress hack going around targeting older versions of Wordpress.  The latest version is unaffected so if you have been a good upgrader you are safe!  A couple of big name bloggers (here and here) got hit recently, and it can also happen to you.  In fact, it might have happened already!  Check this post from Lorelle on Wordpress with lots of gorey details about the hack and to find out if you may be a victim.