Gator Crossing

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…………

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.

…

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! …

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! …