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Google just made some updates to Google Trends which allows you to research and compare search terms by popularity and geographical region. If you do keyword research, this can be a very handy tool.

After signing in to a Google Account, visitors to Trends can now view the “numbers” on the graphs as well as being able to download the data via .CSV format.

Here are a couple of graphs I made using Google Trends:

This first one compares Myspace vs Facebook.

What I found most interesting about this was how much more popular Facebook is in Canada while Myspace dominates in the United States.

I already noticed this as I live in Canada, and almost everyone I know locally uses Facebook, whereas all my high school buddies from Michigan, USA only seem to be on Myspace.

And here is a graph that gave me a bit of a chuckle:

Have a look at the terms “diet” and “exercise”.

You can see how those terms take a big dive between Thanksgiving through New Years, with a huge jump in January, and then teeters down again.

I title this graph: “Good Intentions”.

So go check out Google Trends.

Further Reading:

25 Things I Learned on Google Trends - By Steve Rubel

Info on How to Use Google Trends new Features - via the Official Google Blog

I have an interest in rhetoric, the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion.

No, really…this IS interesting, please read on:

My studies of rhetoric have made me fans of those who have mastered the art of persuasion, and one of my favorite examples is the official DreamHost blog. Which is massively entertaining and written by Josh Jones, one of the company’s founders. It was the winner of Blogger’s Choice Awards winner for “Best Corporate Blog - 2007″.

According to DreamHost: “This is our official company blog! We use it to post funnyish, behind-the-scenes goings on at DreamHost! … Think of it as the lighter-side of DreamHost!”

Topics range from gadgets, business, tech news, to DreamHost news and announcements. But some of the best posts fall under the category of “foobars” where DH is fabulously indiscreet when things go wrong.

A foobar post is not what you might expect from a corporate blog when they make a mistake; a large company would do it’s best to apologize and minimize the bad publicity. Whereas DreamHost tackles their own mistakes by taking responsibility for them, apologizing, and then explain why they think a foobar happened, what they did/are doing to fix it, and how they will avoid the problem in the future. And they manage to do all of this in an entertaining way. Actually, let’s take a life lesson from the DreamHost blog. If you make a mistake just follow these steps:

1. Admit the mistake, and take responsibility for it.
2. Apologize.
3. Figure out WHY the mistake happened.
4. Figure out HOW to fix the problem.
5. Plan ahead on how to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

(Remember to smile and work some pop-culture references into your pitch.)

A lot of companies could learn a thing or two about corporate blogging and communication from the DreamHost blog.

I’m sure you’ll dig the DreamHost Blog even if you have no interest in corporate communication, ethos, pathos or logos — so check it out.

Suggested Reading:

Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

The DreamHost Site of the Month (DHSOTM) contest started in 1998 to honor the best sites among the ones they host.

Each month, one DreamHost customer gets their site anointed the Site of the Month; the winner being the site with the highest average vote with at least 10 votes when the newsletter is written. The winner gets mentioned in the newsletter, has their DHSOTM listing in bold, and can display this icon on their site for bragging rights:

Submitting your site in the contest is easy. First log into the DH web panel, and then under the “Home” menu click on DHSOTM. You will see a list of sites currently entered into the contest. To submit your own site, first vote & comment on at least 10 other entries, then click on “Enter Your Site/Check Your Votes” button. Just fill out a short form describing your site and you are done.

2008 DHSOTM Winners:

• May Inkblot Creative Graphic services & design boutique
• April Daniel Ptiner Flash-enabled personal portfolio site
• March CSS Mania The biggest CSS Showcase all over the globe since 2003.
• February Scarlett Vision Media Marketing / Interactive Media Firm
• January Free Minders 200 & More Free Wordpress Themes Gallery

Full list of past winners from 1998 - 2008 are available here.

Even if you don’t win, this is a great way to get feedback about your website and a little exposure. If you do win, it could give you an excellent traffic boost with the mention in the DreamHost newsletter.

Good luck!

If you haven’t already, you may want to check out and bookmark the official Dreamhost Discussion Forums. Although you’ll find some drivel and whining, there are generally a few good conversations taking place around the forums.

If you are a potential customer of Dreamhost, you may want to check out the Curious About Dreamhost? forum to ask current customers about their opinions with DH hosting.

The General Troubleshooting forum is great to get feedback and help from other Dreamhost customers when you run into a problem. Remember that the forum does not replace the support wiki or support form if you need help from a Dreamhost representative.

You’ll also find sections to discuss programming, design, ecommerce and more.

So, have a peak at the Dreamhost Forums

or grab the feeds: RSS feed of all posts | RSS feed of all threads

All DreamHost hosting packages include access to a free flash-based media player as well as an image rotator. This means you can easily (and awesomely) embed audio, video or picture slideshows into your website.

The Flash Media Player can only play videos in “FLV” format… but DreamHost allows you to convert your .avi, .mov, or .mpg into a .FLV via the web panel’s Goodies > Flash Media area.

These tools make it extremely easy to add rich media content to spruce up your site or blog, so give it a try.

More info:

Flash Tools overview with examples

Flash Media Player Usage info - on the Dreamhost wiki.

Flash Image Rotator Usage info - also on the Dreamhost wiki.

DreamHost offers one click installs for a stack of open source software. Which makes it incredibly simple to get a fully functional database driven site up In 5 mins — without much hosting or programming knowledge.

Sweet, eh?

Dreamhost even has an “Easy Mode” for installing WordPress, Zenphoto, phpBB, and Drupal. In easy mode, Dreamhost handles all the software management/upgrades (installation, upgrades, and maintenance is 100% handled for you!), and no files are installed to your account. However, in easy mode you cannot install your own plugins or themes (though there are a number included).

To have full customization, choose the advanced mode instead.

In “advanced mode” (which is still incredibly simple) there are even more 1-click-install web software available: WordPress, Zenphoto, phpBB, Gallery, ZenCart, Pligg, Joomla and others. Remember by using advanced mode you are responsible for upgrading your old installations. Luckily, you can even upgrade your software when needed via the same control panel.

I find this an excellent way to set-up friend’s who don’t know the first thing about HTML, FTP, or hosting, with their own blog or online store.

Check out the support wiki for more information about 1-click installs available through Dreamhost, as well as overviews of the software offered through this service.

The wiki serves as DreamHost’s web hosting manual, but also contains a lot of non DreamHost-specific information too.

The community supported wiki contains tons of information about working with Dreamhost from basic FAQs to detailed tutorials. If you have a question about your hosting, you can probably find the answer in the wiki.

Popular sections in the wiki:

Troubleshooting - if you are experiencing difficulties or errors, this should be your first stop.

Email Help - Covers all aspects of the Dreamhost email system. Having trouble setting your mail client to use your DreamHost e-mail service? Check out Email configuration.

Dreambooks - Info on setting up the popular free guestbook service.

How about setting up custom error pages, or using Crontabs ?

Another gem I found while browsing the wiki was this page about optimizing websites for better performance. Which is a good read for non-Dreamhost customers as well.

I could go on and on about all the goodies you can find in the Dreamhost wiki, but I will leave you now to go and check it out for yourself. I’m sure you’ll find something useful there.

If you missed the announcement, Firefox 3 was released on June 17th.

Said to have: “more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before.” One of the most impressive improvements in my opinion is Firefox’s performance. Firefox 3 has made some great leaps to become the leanest & fastest version to date. Read more about the memory usage improvements via Firefox 3 Memory Usage by Stuart Parmenter.

Download Firefox 3 here, and be sure to check out dria.org’s Field Guide to Firefox 3 which is an in-depth review of the new features.

Last year, Dreamhost announced that it has become carbon neutral. This means that Dreamhost has calculated it’s impact on everything that they use and leave behind from paper, to electricty, and even gas to drive to work, then purchase renewable energy credits and carbon credits to offset their companies personal impact on the environment.

You can read more about how carbon neutral hosting works at Dreamhost via their going green blog post and green hosting page.

Every Dreamhost customer benefits from carbon neutral status. Woohoo.

You can display these spiffy icons on your website to show your host is green by visiting Green Hosting in the web panel to get the linking code.

Further Reading:

If you are interested in carbon neutral - check out David Suzuki’s guide about the subject.

Did you try to view your website but all you get is this following error message?

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”

Don’t panic.

This post will explain what a “bad_httpd_conf” means, and how to fix the problem.

While your gut reaction may be that blog or CMS software is throwing errors, Bad_httpd_conf is actually a custom error message only Dreamhost clients will encounter. The error is produced when IP your domain is resolving to points to an Apache web server not configured for your domain.

Quick fix: Go to your Dreamhost web panel then > Domain > Manage Domains > Edit > Save changes.

You don’t have to actually make any changes before you “Change fully hosted settings now” — just following these steps will rebuild the httpd_conf file for your website and most likely fix the problem. Then wait up to 10 minutes to see if the error has been fixed.

If that didn’t work try the following fix:

Delete Static IP, then re-’Add IP’ - If the domain displaying this error has a static IP address you added from DreamHost’s Web Panel, then Delete the Static IP (you will instantly be refunded), then add a new static IP address to your domain by clicking “Add IP”

Those simple steps should solve the majority of bad_httpd_conf errors. If not could delete then re-add the domain to your account, but that can be a hassle as it deletes the whole website (you would need to backup / re-upload all your files deal with databases, etc.

If this is the route you want to take be sure to check out the Dreamhost support wiki page on how to safely delete and reconfig a domain.

Good luck.