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Alabanza Automation Suite

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST
One of the pioneers of virtual hosting and a significant player in the virtual hosting space, Alabanza's products are geared toward Web hosts interested in a managed virtualization solution, and to resellers and developers interested in having the functionality of virtualization without having to manage it ..

DreamHost Enters Into Application Hosting

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:18:12 +1100

Yesterday on my personal blog, I wrote about WordPress 2.3.3 upgrade due to a security exploit, and one issue I wrote in the comment, is that there are just too many blogs out there installed by Fantastico and alike, that are never updated. They are often targeted by the hackers, employed by blackhat SEO, to inject hidden links into existing blogs. Matt from WordPress agrees:

I think you also have a good point that we need to put pressure on the hosts and Fantastico to take responsibility for the blogs that they set up and stay current with releases.

Then I received DreamHost’s latest newsletter (January 2008), and in section 2 they introduced their new one-click install “easy mode”:

As dumbed-down as we already made our one-click installs, it seems, like politics, there’s always sufficient demand to make it even dumber.

Which is why we now have “easy mode” for our one-click installs, currently available only for WordPress and currently “BETA”:

http://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.installer

When you do “easy mode”, you’ll be using a fully-hosted version of WordPress as opposed to getting files installed into your own web space.

This fully-hosted version WILL use your own MySQL database though, which you’ll have full control of. Although you can still pick from over 50 themes and enable some plugins we have installed, you won’t be able to customize the themes or install extra plugins.

However, you also won’t have to worry about managing your installation at all.. we’ll automatically handle all upgrades and it’s now on US to make sure your WordPress blog is always working and fast and correctly configured (so long as you don’t go mucking directly in your database)!

(In fact, “easy” WordPress one-clicks are ALREADY upgraded to 2.3.3!)

You still get the installation at any sub-domain of yours you’d like and of course there are no ads or anything of THAT ilk.

Also, “easy mode” is cool because ALL you do is pick a sub-domain and in less than 17 seconds you’re ready to blog!

Wow! What DreamHost has done is pretty much mimicking WordPress.com, an application hosting service that takes care of everything for its users! The service provider is responsible for updating all the software stack to ensure the service is always up to date and secure. Yes it is a locked-down platform and you cannot modify your theme files nor uploading any plugins (although there are already 50 themes installed), but sometimes you do have to trade flexibility for security.

Moreover, the database will be listed under your DreamHost control panel, and you are free to mysqldump and move it elsewhere later, which is something that you cannot do with WordPress.com. You should probably also host the media files (images, videos, etc) on a different sub-domain inside your DreamHost account, to make later migration easier.

With all that excitement, I went up to my DreamHost account to check it out straight away. Under “Goodies” and “One Click Installs”, you can now find this:

Choose a software (only WordPress is available at the moment), choose a sub-domain and hit “Install for me now!” and the software is installed! A few seconds later, I can already browse to that URL, and what presents in front of me is a standard WordPress installation page where you type in your blog’s name and admin’s email address, and your WordPres blog is up and running in no time.

All too easy.

These are the plugins installed:

• Disable WordPress Core Update


• Disable WordPress Plugin Updates


• Extended Comment Options


• reCAPTCHA


• WP-ShortStat

WordPress runs very fast as well. All blogs created are CNAME’ed to wordpress.dreamhost.com, instead of on the server your websites normally are. They probably run PHP in FastCGI which is why you can’t edit theme files inside WordPress (due to different uid).

$ curl -I http://<my blog>

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:48:45 GMT

Server: Apache/2.0.61 (Unix) PHP/4.4.7 mod_ssl/2.0.61 OpenSSL/0.9.7e mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2

X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.8

Vary: Accept-Encoding

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Well done DreamHost!

Okay. Time for some disappointment. When I first logged into my shining new quick-installed WordPress blog, scrolled all the way to the bottom of the admin page, and this is what I saw…

WordPress 2.3.2?! WTF?

Update: More issues:

• Instead of WordPress-related websites and services, we have DreamHost blog/support/wiki/etc installed by default on the blogroll.


• Can’t write to .htaccess which means no mod_rewrite, which means no clean URL.

Web Hosting Mergers and Acquisitions - January 2008

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:54:00 -0400

January was a bit slow --- this is often the case as firms often try to close transactions by the end of the year.

Sunnyvale, CA -- Network Appliance, Inc. NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) completed the acquisition of Boston based Onaro, a datacenter automation solution company in a $120 million transaction. It is reported that backers put about $9.5 million in Onaro, which looks like a great return.

Las Vegas NV-- Dialpoint Communications Corporation (OTCBB: DLPC), acquired the assets of South Carolina based Hostigation.com. Dialpoint issued 333,334 shares --- a deal which in another blog I noted was worth $50k in an all stock transaction.

Niagara Falls, ON - Canadian based Vision Online Network was acquired by Deli India based Real Value Hosting. Vision Online Network specializes in Windows based web hosting.

Duluth, GA - Ralph Smith's Fat Jack Hosting Acquired HostMyProxies.com, a proxy website host. HostMyProxies.com is based at an undisclosed location.

Dallas, TX – Affiliated Computer Services, Inc has acquired Syan for approximately $60 million. Syan’s trailing twelve-months revenue was approximately $75 million. The transaction was funded by existing cash on hand. Syan has several large data centers in the UK.

Tempe, AZ - Greenstreet Real Estate Partners acquired the Tempe One (Tempe, AZ) data and call center for $30.3 million.

Edmonton, AB, Canada – California upstart Enacten acquired all of the shares of Edmonton based Alentus Corporation in an all cash transaction. Alentus provides dedicated/managed and shared hosting services. New Commerce Communications (this blogger) represented Alentus in the transaction.

Pittsford, NY - Spider Graphics Corporation and ITX, a web technology and hosting firm merged. The new name is Spider ITX, very creative.

Overland Park, KS - Erickson Solutions Group has bought the client base of Nothing But Net a company that concentrates on Web and e-mail hosting. Hopefully the acquisition will help the Erickson corporate website.

Raleigh, NC - Hosted Solutions has acquired a new data facility, it's second in Charlotte, NC. The site adds 7,600 square feet of floor space.

Obviously not all inclusive - but from the NCC files.

========== MORE ABOUT TOM ==========

New Commerce Communications

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Our Web Hosting Buzz test site showed good response and uptimes.

In The Sphere: Pay It Forward

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:07:26 +0000
The sun is shining and the birds are singing. Spring is here! That doesn’t mean that you’re going to neglect the blogosphere, now are you? Let’s see what people had to say to this week.
Mr. Gary Lee has been involved in a number of link trains in his day, but his latest scheme is actually ...]




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