SOPA must die!

Imagine if you were able to genetically combine Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Darth Vader and Barbara Streisand into one horrifically terrifying being. Now imagine that being is actually a piece of proposed legislature — the terrifying creation in your midst would then be the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which is currently being considered by the House.

SOPA, aka H.R. 3261 is a bill right now in the House sponsored by R-TX Lamar Smith. It’s not just any bill though, it’s a bill that would allow the USDOJ, RIAA, MPAA and anyone else who lobbies for the entertainment industry to effectively censor the internet to suit their needs.

James Allworth recently wrote “Is this really what we want to do to the internet? Shut it down every time it doesn’t fit someone’s business model?” and I couldn’t agree more. Censorship is a slippery slope. Not only that but it also creates an absurd amount of bureaucratic busy work. Here at HostGator we already spend a HUGE amount of time answering DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requests. If we allow our representatives to begin deciding what is and what isn’t ok for you to view on the internet then where will it end?

The bill itself is absurdly broad, creates a ton of liability for small to mid size e-commerce based businesses and will serve to stifle the tech industry in order to cater to lobbying groups paid by companies who refuse to adapt to a world in which free information is king (and almost as unstoppable as a force of nature).

A couple months back Godaddy CEO Bob Parsons decided to head to africa to help out the good african citizens by murdering elephants (pesky elephants!). They received so much hate in response to that you’d think they would take a more neutral tact in their views going forward. NOPE! Today Godaddy came out in support of SOPA (which is mind blowing to us as we’re both in the same sector) and they’re receiving a good amount of (well deserved) lashback:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nmnie/godaddy_supports_sopa_im_transferring_51_domains/

We here at HostGator support a free internet. An Internet in which free information and unhindered distribution of said information is an unalienable human right. Do the same, contact your representative and tell them to vote NO on SOPA.

50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA

Snappy Goes Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Snappy here with an important announcement!

HostGator.com has sent me a company memo this morning confirming that they are once again participating in National Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October and I wanted to pass the good news along to you.

Memo: “In 1985, the search for a cure for Breast Cancer was gaining headway and AstraZeneca founded National Breast Cancer Awareness Month to raise awareness of this growing cause. Thanks to the establishment of NBCAM, in October of each year, organizations across the nation focus on the fight, helping to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the race against breast cancer. HostGator.com is proud to join these organizations in their support for a cure.

So it looks like I’m going pink for October! For those of you who have loved ones who have experienced or are going through this, please give them a Snappyrific hug for me.

Have a great day and think pink.

Dear Mr. Oxley

I receive hundreds of emails a month from customer’s thanking me for the great service we provide and even a few letters utilizing the old fashion snail mail method.

The majority of snail mail reviews I receive are complaints about the hosting services my company has provided. The only problem is that more times then not they get my name correct and the company I own wrong.

I decided to have a little fun with my response to them…………

July 2011 Newsletter

Greetings,

Domains, Domains, Domains

Everyone is interested in an update on our domain registrar launch. We hear you, loud and clear!

While we can’t nail down an exact launch date quite yet, this is a top priority and it’s something that we are working on every day.

We have greatly expanded our development team (over 10 members now) to launch this and other HostGator products as quickly as possible.

So without making any false promises, we can tell you it is coming “soon.”

HostGator Biggest Loser:

HostGator held its own biggest loser 2.0 recently. It was a great success with many of our employees losing lots of weight! There was also a friendly competition between the Austin and Houston offices for who would lose the largest percentage of body weight.

Austin won! Tim B. was the overall winner, losing nearly 14% of his body weight! Great work.

With the win, the Austin office was treated to a great “Grill Fest” on July 1st.

We were busy in June

We thought we handled a lot of support inquiries in May (roughly 520,000), however we blew that away in June.

We answered:

193,708 Chats 105,000 Calls And 252,693 Tickets

Over 551,400 chats, calls and tickets were answered in June.

Accept credit card payments online!

Are you looking to sell products online? If so, you’re in luck as we have the perfect solution for you to accept credit card payments on your website.

We are proud to announce that we are now working with iPayment Inc., one of the largest payment processing companies in the world to bring HostGator clients the guaranteed lowest merchant account rates and fees available.

Already have a merchant account and are selling products online? iPayment will give you a better rate, guaranteed.

You will receive:

• The lowest rates (beating most competitors by an entire 1% PER transaction!)
• FREE Setup
• No Contract terms
• No Processing Minimums
• FREE Gateway, Virtual Terminal AND Fraud Detection Suite (Over $494 Value, FREE!)

You simply need to be a US based business with a US bank account. Sign up today to start accepting payments online or start saving money on your merchant processing fees.

New Facebook & Twitter Pages

We have re-designed both our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Check them out and follow us to stay up to date.

Facebook: www.Facebook.com/HostGator

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/HostGator

For Support Related Inquiries/Updates on Twitter, follow us at: www.Twitter.com/HGSupport

How-to Video Tutorials: How to install Magento

We have released a great set of new video tutorials to help you utilize some of the most popular applications available, such as our “QuickInstall” installer, and content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and many more!

Looking to install Magento? We’ll walk you through the process and provide you with some tips for managing Magento on your account. Simply watch the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/hostgator#p/c/50B05BEC4995B39B/2/YrqL6090q3s

We now have our own YouTube Channel setup with more helpful tutorials. Many new videos will be coming soon. Simply visit http://www.youtube.com/HostGator to subscribe to our channel. You’ll then receive updates on the videos we release.

We’re Hiring! Become a Gator!

We now have over 800 HostGator Employees!

We’re growing faster than ever, and still searching for Linux Administrators with experience in cPanel/WHM. If you’d like to get paid for doing what you already have a passion for, go ahead and check out our jobs page: http://www.hostgator.com/jobs.shtml

Not experienced in Linux administration? Not a problem! We STILL WANT TO PAY YOU! You can earn money by simply referring potential candidates that successfully complete 90 days of full-time employment.

We are currently offering $2,500 for each qualified Administrator that you refer to us, and $500 for chat/phone technicians. For more information about this, and to get started with your referrals, visit our referral page: http://www.hostgator.com/employee-referral.shtml

We are looking for Perl / C Developers!

Perl / C Developers:

We are now hiring Perl / C Developers in Austin, TX. Relocation, competitive salary, and full benefits are provided. Please email dev@hostgator.com to apply today.

Do you know someone who needs web hosting? Do you want to make money?

Join our affiliate program and get paid for sending people to HostGator! Refer your friends, family, co-workers, or anyone who needs web hosting, and you will receive up to $125 per referral! Simply sign up at: http://www.hostgator.com/affiliates.shtml

That’s all for this month.

Thanks, from the HostGator team!

June 2011 Newsletter

Greetings, Gators,

Another month already!? We know we’re a little behind on this month’s newsletter, sorry about that! We once again have some great announcements for you this month though. We Launched Unlimited Shared Windows Hosting:

We are excited to announce that we launched Windows shared hosting services last month. More information can be seen at www.hostgator.com/windows-hosting.shtml

We’re offering unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, Parallels Plesk control panel, ASP/ASP.net Support, Microsoft SQL 2008 (R2) and many more features!

Simply check out the new windows hosting page for more information. New SiteBuilder! Beautiful Designs coming soon!

After MONTHS of searching and testing out more site builders than I originally thought were even available, we have found the best – and our clients deserve nothing but the best!

We will be introducing BaseKit, FREE to all of our clients within the next 60 days (at most). Why BaseKit? Here are just a couple of the reasons we chose BaseKit:

• Extremely easy to use
• Completely Drag and Drop
• Huge List of beautifully designed templates that you can customize
• Tons of additional widgets for you to implement (Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, RSS, Flickr, forms, YouTube, PayPal, calendar, and many more)!
• Supports multiple Languages
• Can add/edit your own HTML and CSS
• Can import PSD designs
• Easy styling tools

And many, many more!

Dedicated Server Bandwidth Increased:

We announced this last month, and the response was GREAT! We just wanted to remind everyone that our dedicated servers now included 10TB of bandwidth as a standard feature at no extra charge! New Gators Everywhere!

Since January 1, 2011 we have hired 580 employees! 252 for our Austin office and 328 for our Houston office. We hired 157 in May alone! Snappy catching your attention while you’re driving?

We now have over 200 HostGator Billboards throughout the United States, here’s our latest right in Times Square:

Any guesses how many support tickets, calls and chats we handled last month? 5,000? 50,000? 100,000? 250,000? Keep guessing!

… drumroll… We handled: Over 240,000 Ticket Replies with an average rating of 9 out of 10 (Nearly 8,000 replies per day).

We answered over 180,000 Chat inquiries, again with an average rating of OVER 9 out of 10 (nearly 6,000 Chats per day).

And we answered over 100,000 phone calls with the average call duration at just over 8 minutes (over 3,000 phone calls per day). That’s over 520,000 inquiries in one month!

We were amazed when we saw the total numbers! And an average rating of 9 out of 10! Great job Gators! Gator Army stage one complete:

We received our first batch of 5 ft, 100lb Gators to our office the other day (4 of them). You’ll probably be seeing MANY more pictures of Snappy around the office and with employees (we’ll try and keep it clean!) ;)

Have a WordPress site or blog and Looking for amazing looking WordPress themes?

We know where you can find them! Our good friends at both iThemes.com and ElegantThemes.com have amazing WordPress themes as well as great prices and specials exclusive to HostGator customers. iThemes.com:

We have met the guys from iThemes at WordPress events and they are a great group (smart too… they use HostGator for their web hosting!)! They definitely know WordPress! They have beautiful designs (www.ithemes.com), plugins (www.pluginbuddy.com) and training courses (www.webdesign.com) available.

ElegantThemes.com:

ElegantThemes lets you access ALL of their WordPress themes for only $39 per year. They have over 64 amazing WordPress themes currently and continue to add more (you get access to future releases throughout the year as well)!

How-to Video Tutorials: How to install Drupal We have released a great set of new video tutorials to help you utilize some of the most popular applications available, such as our “QuickInstall” installer, and content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and many more!

Looking to install Drupal? We’ll walk you through the process and provide you with some tips for managing Drupal on your account. Simply watch the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/HostGator#p/c/50B05BEC4995B39B/4/N2Cyfq61Yh0

We now have our own YouTube Channel setup with more helpful tutorials. Many new videos will be coming soon! Simply visit http://www.youtube.com/HostGator to subscribe to our channel. You’ll then receive updates on the videos we release! We’re Hiring! Become a Gator! We now have over 800 HostGator Employees!|

We’re growing faster than ever, and still searching for Linux Administrators with experience in cPanel/WHM. If you’d like to get paid for doing what you already have a passion for, go ahead and check out our jobs page: http://www.hostgator.com/jobs.shtml

Not experienced in Linux administration? Not a problem! We STILL WANT TO PAY YOU! You can earn money by simply referring potential candidates that successfully complete 90 days of full-time employment. We are currently offering $2,500 for each qualified Administrator that you refer to us, and $500 for chat/phone technicians. For more information about this, and to get started with your referrals, visit our referral page: http://www.hostgator.com/employee-referral.shtml We are looking for Perl/C Developers!

Perl / C Developers: We are now hiring Perl/C Developers in Austin, TX. Relocation, competitive salary, and full benefits are provided. Please email dev@hostgator.com to apply today! Do you know someone who needs web hosting? Do you want to make money?

Join our affiliate program and get paid for sending people to HostGator! Refer your friends, family, co-workers, or anyone who needs web hosting, and you will receive up to $125 per referral! Simply sign up at: http://www.hostgator.com/affiliates.shtml

That’s all for this month.

Thanks, from the HostGator team!