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New Specials, Servers & More
IN THIS ISSUE:
Save with Our April Specials
It’s still not too late to take advantage of our special April promotions that are
available until Monday, April 30th. For new shared plans, you can receive a free
setup on any Shared or Semi-Dedicated Hosting plan priced $7.95 and up with no prepayment
or contract required whatsoever. Just remember to use promotional code APRILFOOLS
when ordering online to receive the FREE setup.
So, if you were considering moving one or more of your websites to our Semi-Dedicated
environment to gain the highest level of performance without having to manage a
server, now is a great time to do it. You’ll save $86.95 on an ASP.NET plan or $126.95
on a ColdFusion MX plan.
Or if you do need your own dedicated server, you can gain some big savings as well.
If you order a Pentium 4 or up Dedicated Hosting plan, you’ll receive 6 months of
managed services for FREE! This means we’ll patch and fix all of the preinstalled
software and the OS and monitor the server for no extra charge until October, 2007.
And if you order one of our Dual Xeon Dedicated Servers, we'll also double the RAM
for FREE for the entire time you use your server. We now offer three Dedicated plans
(see below for news on our brand new server with 273GB of storage) that include
dual processors for an superior level of performance.
New Dual Xeon Raid 5+ Dedicated Server
We have just released a new dedicated hosting plan that offers a sizeable amount
of storage space. Our new Dual Xeon Raid 5 Plus plan is ideal for users that want
an affordable dedicated server that combines powerful performance with a sizable
amount of highly-available storage. With 273GB of storage and a dual processor configuration,
the server offers an advanced level of efficiency and responsiveness.
This new plan is $499.95 per month and includes:
- 273GB SCSI RAID 5 Hard Drive
- Dual 2.8GHz Xeon Processors
- 2GB of RAM* (doubled for FREE if you order by April 30th!)
- 1250GB of bandwidth per month
Not only do we preinstall Windows 2003 Standard Server, Microsoft DNS, IIS 6.0,
Terminal Services and Serv-U FTP, you also receive 2 static IP addresses, 500MB
of shared SQL space, the ability to install any software and SmarterStats, SmarterMail
and SmarterTicket licenses with the server. Visit our Windows Dedicated page to find out more or order a server.
* Just a reminder that if you order by April 30th, you will receive double the RAM
for no extra charge along with 6 months of managed services for free!
MySQL 5
We have made MySQL 5 available across our shared network. For our hosting plans that support this database (which is almost
all of our plans but a select few), you now have the ability to choose between using
MySQL 4 or MySQL 5.
Once logged into the WebControlCenter, under the Database menu option, you will
now find options for MySQL 4 and 5. To add a MySQL 5 database, click on Database--MySQL
5--MySQL Admin and then click on the green ‘add’ icon. Please be aware that additional
databases (outside the one MySQL database included with your plan) are only $5 per
each 50MB used.
Along with the previously added PHP 5 and this addition of MySQL 5 to our network,
we continue in our quest to provide our customers the latest platforms and languages
as soon as they are stable and ready for shared deployment. Currently, new orders
will default to a server with PHP 5 installed.
Greylisting Being Added to Email
We will soon make greylisting available on all of our SmarterMail 4 servers. Greylisting
is a new method of blocking spam based on the behavior of the sending email server.
When enabled, the receiving server replies to emails from unrecognized or unknown
contacts with a simple “I’m busy, please re-send in a few minutes” message, which
has been shown to significantly reduce spam.
For legitimate email, the sending server will attempt to send the email a second
time, in which case the receiving server will process the email as per usual. Therefore,
this can help significantly reduce spam as the underlying idea behind greylisting
is that spammers will not bother to attempt to send an email more than once to any
given email account. However, this efficiency also can lead to initial (though generally
brief) delivery delays once a sender emails an account with greylisting activated.
The length of time an email is delayed is purely dependent on the time set on the
sending server for re-sending an email.
This will only happen on the first message from a given sender not listed on your
Trusted Senders list. Once a sender passes the greylisting test the first time,
they then become a trusted sender. If a message is received from someone on your
Trusted Senders list, the message bypasses greylisting completely and is then processed
by SpamAssassin and our anti-virus settings and then delivered.
Here are some helpful links:
We have been able to block huge amounts of spam on our internal mail servers that
use greylisting (along with SpamAssassin) and believe you will see a major difference
in the reduction of unwanted email as well. You will be notified via email regarding
the date that greylisting will be enabled on your mail server.
Microsoft Mix07 Event
CrystalTech’s Vice President, Derek Curtis, will be speaking at the MIX07 conference
held April 30th through May 2nd at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. MIX is a Microsoft
sponsored event intended for web designers, developers and decision-makers who make
their living at the forefront of the consumer web. You can learn more at http://www.visitmix.com.
Unfortunately for those that haven’t registered yet, MIX07 is officially “Sold Out.”
However, for those of you planning on attending, Derek will be speaking at the “Web
Hosting for Web Designers and Developers” session on May 1st with Deven Kampenhout
of Microsoft. If you’re attending the sold out conference, be sure to introduce
yourself to Derek as we always enjoy getting a chance to meet our customers face-to-face.
New CrystalTech Forums
We are happy to announce that we have changed the software that runs our public
forums. While CrystalTech used Snitz as our forum software for a number of years
to sustain a unique and personal level of communication with our customer base,
we felt it was time to move on to different software.
Our all new and improved forums utilize Simple Machine Forum software and can be
found at a new URL,
http://forums.crystaltech.com. Existing forum users will need to update
any bookmarks and forums subscriptions you currently have in effect.
Not only does the new software provide a more secure interface, it offers our forum
users a more modernized look with easier navigation. Additionally, it includes tracking
of new and old unread topics, advanced search options so you can easily find answers
to your programming questions, ability to set login session length and other useful
features.
If you haven’t visited before, this is a great time to check out our public forums.
CrystalTech was one of the first hosting providers to cultivate an active customer
community, and upgrading our forums is just another step in our efforts to keep
you connected and informed. You’ll find forums for ASP, .NET, ColdFusion MX, PHP,
database management, application development, web design and other pertinent IT
topics.
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