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.

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.

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.

Yeah.. I know… I’m late. But I have an excuse! Nothing important has happened!

Okay… so it’s a lame excuse. But it’s the truth. We’re humming along just fine. While we haven’t had any major breakthroughs in the last month, we also haven’t had any major breakdowns. And that’s the way it should be–at least that second part.

A tip for the paranoid: Plesk has a “backup” feature that allows you to backup your site at any point. If you’ve just done some major changes, you may want to go into Plesk and activate the backup just to make sure that everything you just did gets saved.

I’ll be back next month with even more of this excitement. Until then, happy surfing!

It’s another month, and that means it’s time for another newsletter. This one’s going to be short because… well… not a whole lot has happened. And that’s a good thing. There’s been a lot of little tweaks and updates and such, but moving from v5.0.0.0.0.1 to v5.0.0.0.2 of some helper-script probably isn’t all that interesting to you.

Looking ahead, there is one small bit of news. We’re looking at a few changes which would affect our users (that’d be you), and we’d like your input. Right now, we’re using Plesk as our control panel and ModernBill as our invoicing application. We’re looking at some alternatives to those. Right now, we have cPanel set up on our test box, and we’re looking at AgileBill for our invoicing. We haven’t made any definite decisions either way, we’re just trying them out to see how they work.

Do you have any preferences? Is there anything in either Plesk or ModernBill that you really hate? Anything you’d like to see that isn’t there? If you’ve dealt with other programs in the past, what did you like about them? What did you dislike about them?

We’ll all take your suggestions into consideration, and I’ll certainly keep you informed of any changes as we move along.

I’ll see you all again in October!

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.

Ah… August. The month without any holidays. Not even silly holidays like Arbor Day or Sweetest Day.

August is also a the month when nothing is happening at Geek Niche. Well… there’s always things happening here, but it’s going to be a quiet month, a month of introspection, a month when the world will be at peace and dollar bills will rain from the sky.

Or not.

It is true, however, that August should be a quiet month around here. The server migration took a lot out of us. A serious wrench was thrown in the works when we discovered that some of the basic programs had internal inconsistencies. I apologize very sincerely for any problems this may have caused you, and I want to thank you again, on behalf of all of us here, for being as kind and understanding as you were.

The new server is humming along nicely, and all the tweaks and glitches should be taken care of now. If you notice any problems, please let me know. I’ll make sure the guys with the know-how are notified right away.

With the upgrades, you should notice a few changes. Your Plesk control panel will look a little different–and not just because we installed a new theme, either. There’s some new options available to you. And a couple new applications in the Ap Vault.

Just a few tips on using Plesk:

• You can use the “Directories” button to password protect directories on your site. This means you can have sections which are private, or only accessible to the people you decide to let in–such as a “members’ section”. When you password protect a directory everything inside that directory–including subdirectories–is protected by that password.
• Want to know how well your site is doing and who’s coming to see you? Click the “Reports” button, and select “Web Stats”. A new window will open up with a listing of information by month. Click on the month you want to see and a volume of new information is available to you. This includes where people are coming from, what browser they’re using, what search terms find your site, and which pages are being viewed the most. It’s a great way to find out if someone is stealing (hot-linking) your pictures, or if you’ve your site is being linked from other sites
• Want the mail from your site to be redirected to somewhere else? Go to the “Mail” button, select the address you want to be redirected, and click the “redirect” button. Just fill in the address you want it to go to, and you’re done.
• Too much spam getting through? You can do something about it. Again, click the “Mail” button, and select the e-mail address you want to filter. Click the “Spam Filter” button up above. You’ve got a few options, now. Lower the number of “hits required” and less spam will get through. You can have Plesk automatically delete what it thinks is spam or just mark it with a tag of your choice. The Blacklist is for addresses that you want to automatically delete messages from–regardless of their “spam rating”. The Whitelist is for addresses you want to always show up in your mailbox–even if they look like spam. Click on the “training” button and you can tell Plesk which e-mails in your box are spam and which are real. Plesk will remember these, and learn from what you tell it, so less and less spam will make it through.

Take some time to poke around and see what Plesk can do for you. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

–
M Blaze Miskulin
President
Geek Niche, Inc.