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 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.

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…………

I respectfully request that if you’re going to snail mail me a complaint that you double check that I do in fact own the company your complaining about. These things make me feel absolutely terrible up until the point where I figure out it’s the wrong company.

Just to clarify………

I do not own nor have I ever had any ownership in Inmotion.
I do not own Godaddy either. I’m not sure why but I have received multiple complaint letters with people mixing me up with them. (ewwwwwww)

Phone Calls:

I also ask that if you’re going to call our support line that you try to remember that you are calling us, and whatever you do don’t sound as crazy as this woman who called us last week……

CRAZY CALL WITH OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE

]]> http://blog.hostgator.com/2011/09/30/dear-mr-oxley/feed/ 31 http://blog.hostgator.com/2011/07/21/july-2011-newsletter/ http://blog.hostgator.com/2011/07/21/july-2011-newsletter/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:53:28 +0000 rhromadka http://blog.hostgator.com/?p=1786

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!

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!

If you’ve ever been on the HostGator official blog before, you may have noticed a few things. Actually you may have noticed that something was missing. Where’s Snappy?

We decided that it’s time to bring Snappy back to his natural habitat, the swamp. You’ll notice Snappy with a new modern look as he enjoys gazing at the breezy clouds and wading through the swampy waters.

We want to make it easier for you to connect with us, so we put our RSS feed, Facebook, Twitter, and hiring icons above for easy access. You can now also get updates via Email to enjoy at your convenience, in addition to being able to easily share and comment in posts with Facebook and Twitter.

We’re making greater efforts to roll out more blog posts, use our Flickr account actively, and upload more videos, so don’t forget to sign up for updates on the latest HostGator news!

What do you think about the new design? Chime in!

Greetings, Gators,

We have some exciting news and several fun HostGator happenings to share with you this month.


Bandwidth Increased to 10TB on ALL Dedicated Servers!

All dedicated servers now include 10TB of Bandwidth standard (an increase of as much as 8.5TB FREE!). This includes ALL current/past dedicated server clients as well as new dedicated server orders. You don’t have to do anything to upgrade and it doesn’t cost any extra!

HostGator Loves Elephants!

By now, many of you have heard of the actions of a competitor of ours; GoDaddy’s CEO in the killing of an Elephant (An interview of his can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFsfchClBPk). We have welcomed a very large number of former GoDaddy clients over the last month due to outrage over his actions.

A client of ours recently showed us this video (it’s funny!). Check out the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rU_iegDCzs

We also had one of our clients and affiliates present us with a great HostGator “Elephant Safe Hosting” image below:

Feel free to share/use this image!

Texas Linux Fest:

The beginning of April we attended Texas Linux Fest 2011. We had the chance meet with clients, hire talented new members to our Linux Administration team and even show off our 5 ft tall Snappy! He was a hit!

Here are a few pictures from the event:

How-to Video Tutorials:

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 Joomla? We’ll walk you through the process and provide you with some tips for managing Joomla on your account. Simply watch the video below:
http://www.youtube.com/user/hostgator#p/c/50B05BEC4995B39B/3/yUyRMQyua20

We also 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!

Boost sales on your website with Olark live chat

Imagine if your website was a store with visitors coming in and out all day. Doesn’t it seem strange that you can’t actually talk to any of these people when they’re in your store? What if I told that talking to any one of these people in your store would make them on average 3 times more likely to come back and purchase again? It does! Live chat can help you answer important pre-sales questions before your visitors leave your site or abandon their shopping cart, plus live chat technology is far beyond what it was even 2 years ago!

HostGator has partnered with Olark to bring you a different kind of live chat, one that’s incredibly powerful (like our friend Snappy) but doesn’t require you changing your workflow. Imagine seeing every person on your website right now inside GTalk, iChat, or on your Blackberry. What would you say to them?

We’re Hiring! Become a Gator!

We now have over 600 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!

Greetings, Gators!

We have another exciting newsletter in store for you. A lot has been going on this month, and there are a couple of big announcements to make!

We’ve outgrown our swamp! We’re expanding!

With so much growth over the last few years, we’re now outgrowing our headquarters office in Houston, Texas. So we bought a new, larger office building in Houston! It’s located on the North Loop and is a 170,000 Sq-ft Class A office building! There will be MANY more pictures to come once we get fully moved in and get it decked out, Gator style!

Here are a few pictures to tide you over in the meantime:

HostGator introduces Mobile Mail!

This month, we’re happy to announce the launch of our all-new mobile webmail system, which is available to all HostGator customers. The interface should work on all (or most) mobile phones, and it can be custom branded with your domain name!

To see a demo of this system, simply visit:
http://mobilemail.hostgator.com/

For more information and instructions on how to set this up, please visit:
http://forums.hostgator.com/new-mobile-webmail-system-t118928.html?p=285010#post285010

How-to Video Tutorials

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!

Here is a video overview of our one-click installation program, QuickInstall, which allows you to quickly and easily install many great applications:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1SdPDtcu9w&feature=channel_video_title

We also 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!

WordPress, Jetpack, VaultPress & HostGator:

Lately, we have been working closely with Automattic on some of their great new features. HostGator is a launch partner and proud sponsor.

JetPack:
Jetpack supercharges your WordPress site with new features previously unavailable for WordPress.org users!

Jetpack brings you many great new features. Here are just a few favorite additions:

WordPress stats, A Twitter widget, Gravatar Hovercards, WP.me shortlinks, Sharedaddy for social media sharing and bookmarking, LaTeX markup, After the Deadline writing tools, and Shortcode Embeds for video inclusion.

New WordPress installations made through QuickInstall will be automatically loaded with Jetpack. If you installed WordPress before March 9, 2011, simply visit http://jetpack.me/ to download the plugin and start using the features today.

VaultPress:

Disaster happens. Things go wrong. Aliens attack. Enter VaultPress.

VaultPress provides a full backup and protection solution for your WordPress blog. Sleep easier at night knowing that your plugins, themes, posts, comments, and more are all safeguarded and ready to be restored should anything go wrong. To take advantage of VaultPress, simply install WordPress through your control panel by clicking on the QuickInstall tab. After you have setup WordPress, you will receive a beautiful, invitation-only Golden Ticket to VaultPress.

To install WordPress, simply login to your control panel and go to the “QuickInstall” tab. You can also watch our video tutorial on installing and using WordPress by checking out our official HostGator YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeyoVxSK1yI&feature=relmfu

If you already have WordPress installed, simply login to your billing control panel and click on the “Get a Golden Ticket” link to receive your VaultPress invitation.

 
What’s coming soon at HostGator?

The highly-anticipated launch of our own domain registrar! We know many people have been asking for this, and we’re working hard on launching our own registrar VERY SOON! We can assure you, it’s going to be well worth the wait!

We’re Hiring! Become a Gator!

We now have over 600 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 developers & graphic designers!

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!

We’re Hiring Graphic/Website Designers:
Are you ready to be a major part of one of the fastest growing companies in America? Do you want your work to be seen by millions of people every month? Join our Design team! We’re looking for graphic designers who have an amazing portfolio to assist our team with the development of creative projects including web sites, website templates, website content, user interfaces, banner advertisements, as well as different forms of printed collateral and advertisements for our various brands. Please see http://www.hostgator.com/graphic-website-designer.shtml for more information about the position and the requirements.

We are hiring graphic designers for our Austin, Texas office. Relocation, competitive salary, and full benefits are provided. Please email designjobs@hostgator.com with your resume, more information about yourself, and a link to your portfolio (required). Please understand that due to the number of inquiries we receive, you may not receive a reply.

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!

Greetings Gators,

South By Southwest:

SXSW is an annual music, film and technology festival in Austin, TX. In recent years, SXSW has been a large promotion and launching ground for new companies and products including, twitter, foursquare and more! There is a lot of anticipation on what will be happening at this year’s SXSW!

HostGator will be at SXSW this year! We are sponsoring the WordPress Party. If you’re going to be at SXSW, look around for us!

$25 in FREE Advertising Credits to grow your business:

We have partnered with Yahoo! + Bing to bring you $25 in FREE Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising credits to grow your business!

To receive your free advertising credits, simply click on the button below (specific to USA based or Canada based clients) to sign up for your Yahoo! + Bing advertising credits. This offer is available to new Yahoo! + Bing advertisers only.

This offer is currently only available to USA and Canada clients. Unfortunately Yahoo! + Bing are not offering credits to international users, however we will certainly update you should that ever change.

USA Clients click on the button below to get started and receive $25 in FREE ad credits:

Canada Clients click on the button below to get started and receive $25 in FREE ad credits:

We wanted to send a big thank you to our friends, Trendy Sitebuilder. They know how much Gator’s love cake and sent us a great present recently:

You can find Trendy Site Builder within your control panel in the special offers section and also within HostGator’s QuickInstall to easily get started using Trendy Site Builder today!

Snappy Makeover?

After seeing the amazing 3D HostGator Cake we wanted to see about giving Snappy a new, updated and more modern look! Here is an exclusive preview (still being worked on) for you to see next to Snappy, in his current form:

HostGator is Sponsoring Texas Linux Fest!


Texas Linux Fest is the only state-wide, community-run conference for Linux and open source software users and enthusiasts from around the Lone Star State. HostGator is a Platinum sponsor of Texas Linux Fest. The event is April 2nd at the Hilton in Austin, TX. Register and come say hi to us! Visit http://texaslinuxfest.org/ for more details.

What’s coming soon at HostGator?

The highly anticipated launch of our own domain registrar! We know everyone has been asking for this and we’re working hard on launching our own registrar VERY SOON! We can assure you, it is going to be well worth the wait!

Become a Gator! We’re Hiring!

In our last email we let you know that we had been growing AND hiring at an enormous rate and we’ve added right around 100 additional employees at HostGator over the last 2 months! We now have over 600 HostGator Employees!

We’re growing faster than ever and we are still in search of 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 at 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 Admin you refer to us, and $500 for chat/phone techs. For more information on this, and to get started with your referrals, visit our referral page at http://www.hostgator.com/employee-referral.shtml

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

Know someone who needs web hosting? 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 receive up to $125 per referral!  Simply sign up at http://www.hostgator.com/affiliates.shtml

That’s all for this month,
The HostGator team!

Anyone who has ever watched the discovery channel for an extended period of time can tell you that if there’s one thing a gator is ill prepared to handle, it’s an ice storm. Due to the recent arctic cold fronts arrival here in Houston the HG staff got to experience first hand what a Texas ice storm is all about.

Leading up to the storm the mood around southeast Texas was very lively at the prospect of ultra-rare snowfall. Kids & parents alike were giddy with the notion of baking sheet sled rides, snow angels and of course the always highly anticipated snowball warfare. Unfortunately, that’s not what the residents of Houston received.

Instead, Houston got a nice healthy dose of Black Ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ice). Anyone who has ever driven on or around a Houston freeway can tell you that the fearless army of amateur demolition derby drivers that regularly patrol the cities roads need no help in creating a hazardous mess on a daily basis. The heavy coat of ice on all the overpasses and onramps that morning greatly increased their effectiveness.

Here’s a view of Houston’s transtar traffic map from 2/4/11. The red exclamation mark diamonds indicate either hazardous ice or wrecks:

Needless to say the management here at HostGator were shaking in our boots at the prospect of our entire Houston support staff being quarantined to their neighborhoods by ice slicked roads. Fortuntely the Houston gators sheer determination along with fairer weather conditions at our Austin location allowed us to keep our support volumes manageable.

However, not all of our gators were so lucky on their way in.

While giving a special on site traffic report to a local drive time radio show he himself became a victim of Houston’s icy wrath. Here’s an audio recording of the call which actually captured the crash live on the air:

William calls the Joe Pags Show

Here’s a couple shots of his truck after the incident:

Don’t worry, our gator wasn’t injured. While traversing a dangerously icy overpass his truck lost control and spun ninety degrees slamming into a guard rail. It then spun the opposite direction and slammed into a second guard rail. We couldn’t include the audio from the second collision due to some rather colorful exclamations.

Mother nature can be a fickle mistress, this is something we at HG know all too well. It just goes to show that our gators will brave any obstacle to ensure that your support requests are handled in a timely manner.

Next time though we’ll stay off our cell phones :)