Some comments, information, and a suggestion to DreamHost.

DreamHost was a web host I used once upon a time. I’m not using them anymore, however they do still register a few of my domain names for me.

Their pricing is very difficult to find,… they don’t actually even post it publicly anymore. If you want to see DreamHosts pricing, you actually have to be registered with them for a “free trial”, which actually requires you to transfer a domain name to them, or pay them to register a domain name.

I think this is very frustrating for people who just want to price out their plans, so I’ve taken the time to get the pricing information here and share it with you. If all you want is the pricing information, and the information behind the asterisk “as low as $8.95″ that they say, here is the pricing break down.

• monthly ($10.95/mo, $49.95 set up fee)
• yearly ($9.95/mo, the $49.95 set up fee will be waived)
• every two years ($8.95/mo, no set up fee)
• every three years ($7.95/mo, no set up fee)
• every five years ($6.95/mo, no set up fee)
• every ten years ($5.95/mo, no set up fee)

Note, prices are subject to change at any time without notice, so please contact DreamHost sales department for updated pricing details or to verify this information, as I am not responsible for the accuracy of this. Also, this is the pricing that was available to me as a long time subscriber. It is possible that this hosting plan is not offered to everyone. Again, please contact DreamHost sales for pricing quotes.

@DreamHost, please post your prices more clearly, and don’t require domain name transfers for your free trial. Everyone knows that domain name registration, name server hosting, and web hosting are three separate services. I can keep my domain name registered elsewhere and just use your name servers you have provided.

If you use Tarball or Gzip file archives for storing your data, occasionally you may need to extract only a few select files or directories, rather than the entire archive file’s contents. Many people waste time, CPU, and drive space extracting the entire archive only to get access to a few of the contents, then to discard the rest of the data.

Why should one wait on files to extract that will just be deleted immediately after, without being used? Thanks to the great minds behind the tar application for Unix and Linux; we have been privileged with a solution. A little-known time saving tip is that extracting only specified directories or files from a tar gzip file is possible. Continue Reading

Are you irritated by those forced advertisements placed through IFRAMEs on your free web space from your host? In this guide, I will show you how to escape the IFRAMEs used when masking / redirecting to your destination address.

These ads are displayed at the top of a forced IFRAME , with the main content being forwarded to the clients destination, all while remaining nested inside the parent frame so as to keep the main ad in the main frame on display through out the user’s entire browsing session.

Using the following JavaScript will help you get your content forwarded first, and then exit the forced ad’s by reloading itself without the IFRAME, thus no more IFRAME advertisements. Continue Reading

You wish you didn’t have to copy files and folders twice on your Linux web server, and consistently have to come up with a way to keep the duplicate files or directories synchronized?

A symbolic link in Linux or Unix is a virtual pointer to another directory or file. It acts in all ways as if it were the original file or folder. A symlink will appear in any directory listing (ls -al), and will indicate the original directory or file. All child directories of a symlink directory will inherit the symbolic link’s directory path when accessed through the symlink. Any changes made to the symbolically linked file or directory, will occur in the original actual file or directory, as the symbolic link just points straight to it. Continue Reading

If you are a WordPress user and you use the plug-in “Twitme” to automatically post any new blog entries to your WordPress account, then there is something you need to know.

It is unwritten law that if you are going to collect someone’s personal information through an application, or web application that you will notify them accordingly.

Unfortunately, not everyone follows this unwritten law, which is now standard and considered a moral obligation of website, and application authors and publishers. Here we take a look at one good example of this standard being ignored from a popular plug-in for WordPress, “Twitme”. Continue Reading