Just finished reading an interesting article titled: “What the Heck Happened to Our Attention Spans?” by Josh Catone from Sitepoint.

Although theories that media has effected the average mind’s attention are nothing new, this post did have some interesting thoughts on the subject. And offers suggestions on how webmasters might utilize this research.

Is the internet making us stupid?

Although DreamHost offers 24/7 tech support by email;  customers who prefer to receive technical support via phone may be interested in “Callbacks”.

Callbacks are not included in standard hosting plans, but can be added to your account for a small fee. Callbacks are requested through your account web panel.

Log in to your account and click through to the “Support/Contact Support” tab, you’ll see a “Request Callback?” checkbox near the end of the submission process.  You can sign up for 3 callbacks per month for $9.95/month.

Please note that Callbacks do not provide a phone number for calling, rather you leave your number and tell tech support when to call you.

For more info:

Support Wiki Entry about Callbacks

Most domain registrars charge $4/year or a similar fee for Whois privacy protection. It’s free at DreamHost, which makes them appealing to some users for domain registrations.

Why would you want your WHOIS domain information kept private?

- To avoid junk mail & spam.

- To keep competitors from reverse engineering your SEO techniques

- To protect your online identity.

- Shield you from stalkers or harassment

Check out Dreamhost Domain Registration service …and remember, DreamHost customers get a free domain name with the purchase of a hosting plan.

Further Reading: DreamHost Blog post about Whois Privacy.

DreamHost makes it super easy to remove or require the “www” from your domain name automatically. While some people prefer to not use “www” in their web site URL some prefer that it always be there.

Whether it be for SEO purposes or just for aesthetics, you can easily set this up via your Web Panel > Domains> Manage Domains.  Click “Edit” for the domain you’d like.  Select  the Always add “www.” or Always Remove “www” option, and click Submit. The change should take effect within 15 minutes.

If you would rather go the .htaccess route or learn more check out the Support Wiki’s pages on: Removing the “www” from your domain, and Requiring the “www” for your domain.

Today, I spent 10 minutes searching Google for the Official DreamHost Blog, before getting irritated and guessed the URL. It wasn’t in the even top 20 results for the phrase “DreamHost Blog”. A random site with a link pointing to THIS blog was in the top 20 results. Crazy, eh?

Maybe it’s just a temporary glitch in the big G’s algos, but it’s annoying — so I am posting the link for the DreamHost blog here and other links of interest to fellow DreamHost customers:

The Official DreamHost Blog - If you don’t already read this, you should. It’s surprisingly entertaining for corporate blog.

DreamHost Status - For current system status information and network maintenance announcements.

DreamHost Forums -  Message forums for DreamHost customers.

DreamHost Support Wiki - Massive user-contributed web hosting manual for DreamHost.

Legacy DreamHost Knowledge Base - Unofficial mirror of the DreamHost Knowledge Base from the beginning of 2006. DreamHost integrated the original Knowledge Base to the new Support Wiki, but some people preferred the old system. Read more about it here.

DreamHost Web Panel - Here is where you log into your hosting control panel.

Anything I have forgotten? Leave a comment. Thanks

Google Apps offers webmasters some pretty spiffy tools, such as email hosting for your domain, custom calenders, start pages and more.

Even spiffier is that DreamHost has made integration and registration with Google Apps dead simple and can create neat subdirectories for the Google hosted content. Hurray!

To get started using Google Apps with your website:

- Log into your DreamHost Web Panel.

- Under Domains > Manage Domains, click on the edit button for your domain.

- Scroll down to the Google Apps & Gmail Options and click the check boxes.

- Click the “register at Google Apps for your Domain” link, and follow the registration instructions.

- Finish by clicking the “Change fully hosted setting now” button.

If you set up email hosting, you will be able to log into “mail.yourdomain.com”, using the Gmail interface (which is awesome, if you don’t already use Gmail, definatly give it a chance to woo you).

For more info see:

Google Apps Homepage - overview and explaination about the various services Apps provides.

Freaky Codes write-up about Google Apps and DreamHost

DreamHost Blog - The post entitled “What Web Hosting is For” talks about DreamHost’s move to encourage users to use Gmail. Funny post, check it out.

Dreamhost is recognized as one of the top web hosts for good reason, they stand by their service and offer a money back guarantee. In case you haven’t heard, DreamHost offers the best (well, at least the longest) money back guarantee in the industry.

With DreamHost, you get 97 days to decide whether you want to be their customer or not. And if you don’t, DreamHost will refund your payments.

So, if you have been thinking about signing up with DreamHost, why not give them a shot? Plus use our discount code of MAXSAVINGS when you sign-up to get up to $50 off your hosting plan.

More info:

DreamHost’s Money Back Guarantee information page.

NB. Please note that this doesn’t apply to payments made via PayPal.

If you think a DreamHost customer is behind illegal activities such as spamming, fraud, copyright infringement, etc… your first stop should be the Dreamhost Abuse Center. (Not the forums)

The Abuse Center’s purpose is to assist anyone experiencing abusive activities originating from or associated with Dreamhost servers, and also educate DreamHost customers on acceptable practices for bulk email, copyrights, trademarks, etc.

DreamHost offers specific instructions for:

If you’ve been spammed by a DreamHost customer Report spam/UBE to DreamHost.

If a DreamHost customer has infringed upon your copyright/trademark: Report copyright infringement or trademark infringement to DreamHost.  For other abuse situations please see the Abuse Center Homepage for more information.

One of the factors I research when shopping for web hosting is what kind of control panel for domain management they use. Plesk, ensim, and Direct Admin are common web administration packages used by webhosts with cPanel being the one I see advertised most.  Some web hosts, like DreamHost, use their own proprietary web panel.

Normally I shy away from hosts with proprietary control panels, because they often have clumsy interfaces and lack the features that cPanel and other panels have include as basic functions. Dreamhost, however, has created their own fantastic web panel.

DreamHost Web Panel Positives:

• DreamHost’s Web Panel gives users access to all the same options as cPanel, plus it has Billing and Support features integrated right in the panel. With almost any other hosting company I have had to log into a seperate control panel(s) to access billing options or submit a support ticket.
• DreamHost’s 1 click installs are better, easy & updated more than Fantastico (cPanel’s comparable feature).
• DreamHost’s Web Panel offers many goodies not available from cPanel, like streaming media tools.

DreamHost Web Panel Negatives:

• Does not have skin (themes) support like cPanel.
• Users accustomed to Cpanel may feel a bit awkward when first learning Web Panel. However, the learning curve isn’t very steep — and becomes second nature quickly.

Further Reading:

DreamHost Wiki page about the Web Panel - Details and tutorials on features accessable through the web panel.

Dreamhost provides a free and automated site backup and restoration system called Snapshots. Though this service is not guaranteed by DreamHost it deserves a mention and some praise as such backups are almost unheared of in a shared hosting environment.

So if you accidentally erased a needed file off the server, messed up your site with a software upgrade or your site was hacked… you can use Snapshot Backups to restore your site back to good.

Snapshot data restoration can be accessed easily through the DreamHost Web Panel under Domains > Manage Domains. The restore button for each domain hosted is listed in the rightmost column under “Actions”.

Clicking on the restore button for a domain will bring up a option menu like the following:

Giving you the option of restoring backups from 3 different time periods, as well as the option to directly restore a backup over top of the existing site, or just place a copy of the backup to an accessible spot on the server.

Remember this is a not a guaranteed service, and you should also keep your own offline backups.

Further info:

Support Wiki’s page on Snapshots - Detailed instructions on Snaphot restoration and troubleshooting.