Yay! Summer is here! (Unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, in which case: Yay! Winter is here!).

Last weekend marks 2 years in business for Geek Niche. That’s like 397 in web-years. I’m very proud to say that, of the few customers who have left us, not one has said it was because we weren’t doing a good enough job. It’s a simple fact of business that you can’t make everyone happy, and some people are going to complain no matter what. The fact that we haven’t a customer like that in 2 years is really impressive. Thank you.

There’s been a number of little tweaks going on behind the scenes in the last month. Nothing huge, just minor upgrades and improvements. One weird side-effect of this has been some “wonkiness” with the billing schedule. Some of you may have noticed that you received two invoices rather close together within the last month. This is a result of our billing software finally catching up since the major upgrade we did earlier in the year. Because of the timing of some invoices and our desire to make sure that things went as smoothly as possible for you, some people weren’t invoiced between late February and Early April (this would be the March billing cycle). The billing software did a little bit of catch-up in May, and this resulted in the May and June invoices coming rather close together. If you think you’ve been billed in error, I’d ask that you first check your credit card statements to see if you may have skipped a payment earlier. If you don’t have your records, or have questions about your billing, let me know. I can give you a list of payments received over the last 6 months.

It looks like smooth sailing for the next month. We don’t have any major upgrades or changes planned.

On a completely unrelated note: Congratulations to our partner Jason and his wife, Thea, on the birth of their 2nd son, Johnathan.

Now… it’s summer… shut off your computer and go outside! You know… That big room with the blue ceiling? Yeah. That one. GO!

Well, it’s May 1st now, and not a whole heck of a lot is happening at the Geek Niche ranch. So I won’t bother rambling on like I normally do about obscure things. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it’s spring time, and we should all be outside enjoying the spring weather… the sun, the flowers, the random storms, the occasional hurricane…. y’know… all those things that make spring time special.

Until next time, here’s hoping that your month properly proportional of sun and rain, and that your life doesn’t get too interesting in the wrong ways.

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

Yes, I know I’m late with the April newsletter. I blame it on Daylight Savings Time being a month early. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There have been a couple of changes in the last month that you may or may not be aware of. As you may recall, we upgraded our billing software. As I mentioned, this is not a painless process. The change is a major one, and the consequences very high. Because of this, we’ve been playing it very safe when there were any doubts. We noticed some quirks with invoices and rather than have mistakes made, we’ve held back sending them out until we know that they’re right. I apologize if this causes anyone any problems. If it does, please let me know, and I can manually generate an invoice for you.

Another part of the change over is that we now use eNom as our registrar, rather than GoDaddy. There are a couple reasons for this. First, eNom is built into the billing software, which makes it simpler and easier for our clients to sign up–no more going to a separate site and then coming back. Secondly, while neither we, nor any of our clients (to my knowledge) have had any problems, GoDaddy is starting to get a reputation for being less than supportive of the rights of their clients in cases of controversy. There are a lot of accusations flying around, and I don’t know which are valid and which aren’t. When it comes to the protection of our clients, however, all of us at Geek Niche prefer to play it safe.

One thing to remember is that you own your domain, and you get to choose who your registrar will be. We supply access to a registrar based on several factors, including cost, reputation, and simplicity of use, but we, in no way, require you to use the registrar we provide. This is just one of the ways in which we help you to protect your own reputation and your investment in your domain.

Okay… so this past month has had some excitement. See? The boring months aren’t so bad now, are they?

For those of you who missed all the action, read that [points down]. However, a few good things came out of all of this. With a relatively damage-free attack, we were alerted to some vulnerabilities and were able to patch them fairly quickly. This sent us off on an upgrade mission. We’re now better protected and more up-to-date on our operating software. The research into this stuff also pointed out some other stuff that needed to be upgraded. I believe that all of you who are using WordPress now have the latest version. If you don’t, I recommend that you upgrade. If you’d like us to do it for you (for a small fee of $5), just drop any of us an e-mail, and we’ll do it for you.

In the midst of all this upgrading, we decided to finally bite the bullet and upgrade our billing & finance software. This is far from a painless process for us. You’ve probably noticed that you’ve gotten some duplicate invoices. Hopefully, you’ve gotten the e-mails explaining them and telling you not to panic. We’re watching what’s going on very carefully, and we’ll make sure you’re not over-billed.

As we head into the height of tax season, I’d just like to remind any of you who use your websites for business, that you should be able to list your payments to us as a business expense. If you need a receipt showing what you’ve paid for the 2006 tax year, let me know and I’ll send you one.

That’s all for this month. See you in 30.

—
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

First of all, I’d like to say thank you to all of you for your patience during this weekend’s problems. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.

While the initial response was happening, I was out trying to hunt down information on who and/or what had hit us, so that we could assess the degree of damage done. In addition to finding that the attack was relatively harmless, I discovered 2 things: 1) there’s only 1 place where this attack is even mentioned, 2) there are a bazillion sites that are infected. We’re all very fortunate that our admins are observant and noticed it as quickly as they did.

With the exception of a couple bits of user-inflicted “panic damage”, we appear to have everything cleaned and back to normal. If you notice any problems, please let one of us know right away.

In response to the events this weekend, I’d like to make a few comments.

• While Geek Niche does perform backups to all the sites, these are for “catastrophic recovery”. We can’t restore a specific file; it’s the whole site or nothing. This means that any changes made since that backup will be lost forever. In the case of this weekend, we had no way of knowing how long the invading code had been sitting on the server, so using the backups could have deleted a lot of information without solving any of the problems.
• WordPress is one of the applications that can possibly be vulnerable to the type of attack we encountered. The latest version of WordPress is immune to this attack, and I strongly encourage you to upgrade. If you don’t know how, let me know, and one of our staff will do the upgrade for you. Upgrades to WP 2.1 will be done for free until Feb 16th. After that, there will be a $10 charge.
• While we can help you recover from a catastrophic failure on your site, there’s a few things you can do to protect yourself.
• If you make changes to files on your site, save a copy to your local computer. Saving a “default” set of files is always a good idea, and having a local copy of any customized files makes it really easy to recover from a minor problem.
• If you’re using WordPress, you can back up all of your data using the “WordPress Database Backup” plugin. This plugin allows you to create a copy of all of your data and either save it to a file on the server (fast, but the least safe), e-mail it to any e-mail address, or save it directly to your computer. You have to go in and manually tell it to create a back-up each time, so remember to do so regularly. If you need help either installing this plugin or restoring data after a problem, let us know. We can provide either service for a $10/instance fee.
• WordPress also has an export/import feature. This is good for saving only the data (posts, comments, etc.), and is easy to use, but is less able to handle a catastrophic failure.

Yeah, yeah… I know. I missed the January 2007 Newsletter. But it’s not my fault. Honest. It’s Stella’s fault. Stella Artois. Far too many pints of Stella Artois. But… to massacre a cliche: “When in Canada, do what the Canadians do.”

Now, some of you may get picky and point out that I’m late with the newsletter for this month, too. Nope. I planned it this way (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!). You see, today is the Feast of St. Blaise. So, to celebrate, I’m writing the newsletter.

So… anyway… It’s now February (Happy New Year!) and things have been going well here at Geek Niche. While there hasn’t been anything huge or “flashy” going on, there have been some tweaks and adjustments and minor upgrades behind the scenes. Most notably, we’ve upgraded Plesk again. Included in this version were some changes to the Application Vault. There have been some upgrades and additions to the applications in there, so you may want to take a peek and see if there’s anything new or interesting.

A couple random points:

• I got a question from one of our clients recently regarding a letter he received telling him it was time to renew his domain. Being fairly sure that I hadn’t done any somnambulist mailings, I checked it out. It was, as I suspected, a ploy by another company to steal his business away from us (and charge him twice as much for it!). Geek Niche uses GoDaddy as it’s registrar. If you’ve registered through us, the only notices you should pay attention to will come from Geek Niche or GoDaddy.
• Many of you us WordPress on your sites. Over the past year, the WordPress team has been working very hard to improve their product, and they’ve released a number of updates. The latest “stable” release (meaning it’s passed all the testing stages) is 2.1 (Ella). To find the current version of your installation, log into your Dashboard and scroll down to the bottom of the page. It should say something like “2.0.2 — 0.13 seconds”. The first part of that is your version number. If it’s less than 2.1, I recommend upgrading. If it’s less than 2.0, I strongly recommend upgrading. To upgrade, all you need is the ability to FTP to your account. Just download the new version and follow the instructions that are included. It’s easy to do and will make your blog more secure. If you have any questions, just e-mail me.
• As always, if you’re looking to do something special with your site, Geek Niche has designers and programmers for hire. Whether it’s a custom WordPress theme or plug-in, an e-mail submission form, or an online database, drop us a line and we’ll find someone who can handle you project.

That’s all for this month.

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

From Christmas day through January 6, if you refer a friend, they get $15 off their set-up fee, and you get $10 off your next month’s bill.

Tell your friend to use the coupon code “Stocking Stuffer” for their discount–and make sure they e-mail me so you get your $10 off. And… if they stick around for 3 months or more, you still get your kickback.

Ain’t it just a joyous season to be a Geek Niche Customer?

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President & Chief Elf
Geek Niche, Inc.

Yes, it’s that time again. Actually, it’s past that time, but I’ve got a very good reason for being late (no, it’s not because I was being lazy): We’ve been doing some upgrades!

The Plesk control panel is now up to version 8.1, and with that extra decimal comes several nifty new features.

One of the first things you may notice is that some there’s a few changes to the way things look. For example, the spam-filter section of your mail controls is now tabbed. There are a few other little tweaks in the look here and there, but nothing that should be confusing.

Now… on to the important stuff: New features!

One of the biggest is the partnership of Plesk with Fotolia. What’s Fotolia?

SWsoft (the maker of Plesk) has partnered with Fotolia, the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to buy and share stock images and illustrations. Fotolia offers the largest image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print. For a limited time, you can receive a 20% discount.

What does this mean for you? It means professional-quality photographs and graphics for your website–legally!

For the stat-hounds out there, Plesk has added the option of using AWStats instead of Webalizer. Where Webalizer gives you a nice overview of how your site is being viewed, it doesn’t let you get down to the nitty-gritty details. AWStats changes that. It gives a lot more information, and lets you see every last page hit, referrer, and keyword search. It shows you how many of your viewers are using which browsers, how long they’re staying at your site, when they’re coming in, and a whole lot more. If you’re just interested in the big picture, stick with Webalizer. If you’re obsessive about your stats (like I am!), you’ll definitely want to switch.

Right now, individual users can’t change the setting on their own (it looks like you can, but you really can’t). Just drop me a line and let me know that you’d like to switch over to AWStats, and I’ll do it for you. It takes about 24 hours for things to switch over, so you won’t get the details until the following day.

For those of you who just have to check your e-mail–even when you’re nowhere near your computer–there’s something new for you! Mobile IMP lets you check your e-mail from anywhere (provided you have the appropriate geek accouterments).

Mobile IMP is a Horde web mail extension that allows access to web mail through mobile devices such as WAP phones or PDAs. Basic IMP functionality is available, including mailbox viewing and paging, viewing messages, deleting, replying, forwarding, and composing new messages.

Don’t worry, geeks. You haven’t been forgotten. With Plesk 8.1 comes MySQL 5.0 Ooooh. Aren’t you excited?

Don’t forget to check out the Application Vault for new additions and updates of your old favorites: 37 applications free and easy to install.

And if you haven’t been into Plesk since the last upgrade to 8.0 (where have you been?!) there’s this wonderful new “desktop” that puts upgrade information, basic stats, and the most commonly-used tools all in one place. You can even create shortcuts to your “favorite” screens within Plesk.

And that’s not all! Order now and get the Samurai Tomato Slicer!! Umm…. sorry… ignore that. I was having flashbacks to the old Ronco commercials.

That reminds me, however…. It is getting close to Christmas: that wonderful time of year when Santa brings all the good little geeks new computers. And, as you know, every computer user needs their very own website. Right? Luckily for you, we have our referral program: Whenever you refer a new customer (and they let us know about it) you get 10% of their hosting cost deducted from your bill–for as long as they’re with us (some restrictions apply–of course). In D.C. they call this a “kickback”. Around here, we call it a “thank you” (it even has the approval of our ethics committee).

And…. check back here on Christmas morning. Maybe Santa will have left a little something extra under the server.

On a less silly note: we are coming up on a season which is important to a lot of people of a lot of faiths. No matter if you’re waiting for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, the Winter Solstice, or the start of the ice-fishing season, remember to take some time to step back and remember what it’s all about. Those who celebrate Ramadan have recently been through their season of charity; many of the rest of us are entering ours. Below are just a few of the options for helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

Child’s Play
Salvation Army
Red Cross
Empty Stocking Club
Any Soldier

And our very own Christmas Fairy has a few suggestions of her own.

Well, that newsletter was worth the wait. There’s nothing better than ending the year with a bang (unless the bang is the sound of a server exploding… then it kinda sucks).

Have a good December. I’ll see you next year.

—
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

Yes, spam is getting worse. A flood of new “bots” and and other nefarious programs have started a new offensive (and it is very offensive) against our inboxes. Unfortunately, there’s not much that we can do about it right now. By using “zombies” (innocent computers taken over by viruses) and creating e-mails that are very difficult for automatic filters to differentiate from real e-mail, the spam creators are able to ignore most of the defenses we have. A leading corporate e-mail provider claims that 91% of the traffic that passes through their servers is spam.

Here at Geek Niche, our filtering ability is at its limit. Pushing our defenses higher risks deleting real e-mails. If this new wave of spam turns out to be more than a short-term spike, we’ll look at alternate, more aggressive, means of filtering–even though we run the risk of catching real e-mails in the filters.

Happy Halloween!

It’s trick-or-treat time, and we’ve got a treat for you (and you didn’t even have to dress up and knock on our door!).

We’re officially announcing the Geek Niche Referral Program.

The way it works is this:

If you refer someone to us, and they sign up, they just need to drop me an e-mail saying “I was referred by “. After they’ve been with us for 3 months, we’ll apply 10% of their monthly fee towards your account for as long as they’re with us.

There are a couple disclaimers and limits: This is a trial program to see if we want to advance into a full-fledged affiliate program, so we reserve the right to tweak things a bit in order to make things work smoothly. We will, however, inform you in advance if there are any major changes.

The 2nd limit is that this is a “discount” program, not a “cash back” program. What that boils down to is: you can’t get more credit per month than the cost of your hosting.

If you have any questions, drop me a line.

—
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.