Snappy recently had the pleasure of hanging out on-stage and backstage with Houston’s own Ryan Scroggins & The Trenchtown Texans. The band’s namesake and frontman is a veritable renaissance man; artist, multi-instrumentalist, song writer, professional tattoo artist and former herpetologist for the Houston Zoo.  Mr. Scroggins originally made a name for himself in the music world as the organist for the well-known ska band Los Skarnales.

The Trenchtown Texans play a unique mix of Americana/Ska/Roots/Reggae/Swamp music and have released three albums and toured extensively, however these days the band only makes appearances sporadically.  As such, it was truly a pleasure for Snappy to be able to share the stage with them at Houston’s Continental Club:

After the show, Snappy was fortunate enough to spend a few minutes with Mr. Scroggins.  Having again been a former Herpetologist for the Houston Zoo, Ryan is very familiar with gators, however this would be his first encounter with a blue gator:

If you have a keen eye, you’ll be able to spot Snappy in the video below of the band performing “Too Tired to Fight”:

A quick YouTube search will return lots of videos of this great band, and if they happen to come to your town do make it a point to check them out live.

If you have an event in the Houston or Austin area that you would like for Snappy to attend, please get in touch with us by emailing feedback@hostgator.com ATTN: Blog.

We recently chronicled Snappy’s trip to the Houston Zoo on Instagram.  However we’re going to re-cap here as well as share some additional pictures of Snappy that didn’t make it onto Instagram; think of this as the bonus footage of Snappy’s trip to the Houston Zoo.  You can also revisit Snappy’s trip to the Houston Zoo on Pinterest!

First and foremost, what would a trip to the zoo be without seeing the famous pink flamingos?

After Snappy communed with the flamingos, he found this other unique bird that apparently has its kneecaps on backwards:

Snappy does like to take a moment to enjoy the scenery form time to time.  The Houston Zoo has tons of beautiful rest areas throughout its grounds.

One of the Zoo’s newest exhibits is the African forest.  This exhibit contains giraffes, rhinos and numerous other animals, but Snappy couldn’t pass up the photo op with this mask, near the entrance of the exhibit:

What can we say about this next pic?  If you followed this adventure on Instagram, you saw another picture of Snappy up in a different tree… for a gator, Snappy sure likes to climb!

The only appropriate way to conclude Snappy’s trip to the Houston Zoo is with a visit to his fellow gators.  This is an American alligator, just like Snappy!

If you’re in the Houston area, we highly encourage you to go visit the Houston Zoo.  Or at the very least, visit them online: http://houstonzoo.org.

If you have an event in the Houston or Austin area that you would like for Snappy to attend, please get in touch with us by emailing feedback@hostgator.com ATTN: Blog.

The Internet never sleeps.  Is it possible to even fathom the idea of any given moment without someone in the world being connected to the Internet for one reason or another?  It wasn’t that long ago that the Internet wasn’t even a thing, but anymore it’s something that we can’t do without.  Let’s take a look at “A Day in the Life of the Internet”:

<a href="http://blog.hostgator.com/2013/05/02/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-internet/" ><img src="http://blog.hostgator.com/~/tmp/wp-uploads/2013/05/day_in_the_life_of_the_internet.png" alt="A day in the life of the Internet" width="600" /></a></br><a href="http://blog.hostgator.com/2013/05/02/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-internet/" >A Day in The Life of The Internet</a> via <a href="http://hostgator.com" >HostGator</a>

WordPress has been under fire lately, though it is important to note that although WordPress has been the target that there is truly nothing the platform has done to cause these recent circumstances to occur.  You may have heard about the recent distributed brute force attack, which is presently on-going still and targets the “admin” user name.

A subsequent, and slightly lower-level attack has since been launched against popular WordPress plugins, like WPSuperCache and W3TotalCache.  While we did identify this circumstance very early on and take pre-emptive measure to effective mitigate this attack on our server farm, it simply reiterates a point we often try to make: please make sure your scripts and plugins are always up-to-date.

Metaphorically speaking, having out of date scripts or plugins installed is akin to having a very nice house, with a very nice door with a very nice deadbolt on it that you simply choose to not engage, effectively leaving your door wide open to anyone what wants to walk in and do as they see fit with your property.

As a web host, we provide the house, the door and the lock.  We also hand you the key to the lock on the door, but we cannot force you to engage that lock, we can only highly encourage you to do so.

One thing to note in regards to keeping your script installs themselves up to date is that HostGator’s proprietary script install tool, QuickInstall, does allow you to opt in to automatic updates for WordPress and other popular scripts.  We highly encourage you to utilize QuickInstall and it’s automatic update functionality.

Please take a moment to log into the dashboards of all of your CMS-backend websites and take a moment to ensure everything is up-to-date.  Otherwise, you are choosing not to engage that deadbolt on your front door and ultimately welcoming in all manner of individuals who may not have your best interests in mind.

1984 is a classic novel written by George Orwell.  Published in 1949, the story centers around a dystopian society and its all-seeing “Big Brother.”  Essentially it is a cautionary tale about a totalitarian government that closely monitored each and every action of its citizens.

The actual year of 1984 has now come and gone, but with today’s technological advances and the nature of the Internet, in general, is it possible that we are approaching a Big Brother-type of monitoring of our on-line actions? We cannot answer this question, but we can provide you with the following infographic that outlines the nature of privacy and the Internet in 2013:

<a href="http://blog.hostgator.com/2013/04/23/1984-in-2013-privacy-the-internet/" ><img src="http://blog.hostgator.com/~/tmp/wp-uploads/2013/04/1984in2013_internet_privacy.png" alt="1984 in 2013: Privacy and The Internet" width="600" /></a></br><a href="http://blog.hostgator.com/2013/04/23/1984-in-2013-privacy-the-internet/" >1984 in 2013: Privacy and The Internet</a> via <a href="http://hostgator.com" >HostGator</a>

We at HostGator have always vehemently opposed any piece of legislation that contradicts the idea of a free and open Internet.  If you haven’t read our prior blog posts about CISPA and it’s earlier incarnation SOPA, then please do so now in order to bring yourself up to speed:

CISPA Must Die!

SOPA Must Die!

The problem with legislation such as these is not what it appears to do on the front end, rather it’s the back end implications that make it frightening.  Cyber security is serious business, and it is a realm that could use some tightening up.  However, this tightening up cannot come at the expense of your privacy due to a circumvention of existing privacy laws.

Why are we mentioning CISPA now?  Well, it has reared its head once again and is being voted on by the House of Representatives today.  It seems this piece of legislation refuses to die.  Unfortunately, the longer something like this sticks around, the less attention the media at large will pay attention to it.

Truth be told, we’ve outlined in great detail what is wrong with this piece of legislation in our previous blog posts.  We don’t want to be redundant, but we didn’t want to let this day pass without mentioning again this issue that truly affects us all.

Fortunately, President Obama maintains that he would veto this bill were it to pass in the House.  Hopefully, it won’t come to the necessity of a veto.  Let’s put this legislation to sleep, once and for all, and let it not awaken until it has matured into a form that would actually benefit the people as opposed to slowly eroding your right to online privacy.

It has been quite a while since our last official Newsletter.  The truth is that although we’ve been incredibly busy, and constantly growing, there hasn’t been much news to share; its just been nose to the grindstone around the offices.

Having said that, we wanted to take a moment to share with you some account security tips, news about our ever-growing social media presence, and first-up the fact that we’re now hiring!

HostGator is Hiring!

The truth is that HostGator virtually never stops hiring.  We are a constantly-growing company in an ever-expanding industry; we are always on the look out for qualified individuals to join us in our myriad of available positions.  From front-line Technical Support, to System Administrators, Billing Administrators, Account Managers, and Verifications Agents… entry-level through industry veterans, we are now hiring for all positions!  To apply, please visit http://hostgator.com/jobs or email us, jobs@hostgator.com.

HostGator also has an employee referral program that is open to anyone and everyone; we will pay you up to $2,500 to refer qualified candidates to us for employment!  Full information about the employee referral program is available at http://www.hostgator.com/employee-referral

Account Security:

Did you know that one of the most common causes for a hosting account to become hacked, or otherwise compromised, is also the most easily preventable cause as well?  If you use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or any other PHP-script, database-driven CMS then it is vitally important that you keep these scripts up-to-date.  Failure to do so is literally an open door inviting hackers to gain access to your account.  Updating these scripts is as simple as logging into the back-end and clicking on any “update” notification that appears therein.

If you install any of these scripts via HostGator’s QuickInstall tool within cPanel, it will make this even easier for you by automatically updating your scripts!

HostGator on Social Media:

HostGator is active on virtually every social media platform in existence today, from Facebook and Twitter to Google+, Instagram,  Pinterest, and more!  See the entire list, and follow us on your preferred platforms at this link.

New Domain Pricing!

Now is an excellent time to register that new domain name you’ve had in mind! We’ve lowered the price to only $12.95 for all new .com/.net/.org/.biz/.info domain registration.  This price is good for multi-year registrations as well, however renewals will remain at the standard price.  Register your new domain now at http://register.hostgator.com!