The Etomite Blog

Etomite Newsletter

Hi, and welcome to the first issue of The Etomite Newsletter; It’s got information on recent changes and upcoming changes - so grab a coffee and read on!

Within this Issue of The Etomite Newsletter:

1. Website Changes
2. Site Sponsorship
3. Download Updates
4. Etomite Toolbar
5. Monitor Your Site Uptime
6. Upcoming Release
7. Newsletter Closure

– The Newsletter –

(1) WEBSITE CHANGES
Finally! All the website changes have been implemented.
This is what I’ve done…
We now have a single server dedicated to just the mySQL aspect of the Etomite website. It’s right next to the http server that Etomite’s being served from.
Last week (the tail end of), I experimented with LightTPD on the Etomite website. Personally, for this size of a site, it wasn’t for us - besides, the quirky issues it created were a PITA (like the old snippet library issues); I’ve now returned to Apache for our needs. It doesn’t use that much more memory.
The actual control aspect of the server is controlled by LXAdmin, whereas before it was cPanel - cPanel is a resource hog for what we need it for; we only needed the basic of control functions (I’m now using it on all of my small VPS’es).

(2) SITE SPONSORSHOP
Just incase you didn’t know, we no longer have a “free provider” like we did before - this way we have more control on every aspect of the site.
As you can see (from the footer of the site), I’m currently sponsoring the payment for the hosting. What we need is some people to sponsor the hosting costs.
Sponsoring involves sending us the money to pay for it for a month, and in return you get your website URL at the bottom of every generated page across the Etomite website, for a month.
The cost is as follows: $65 per month.
If you’re looking to sponsor the hosting cost, then e-Mail/PM me; and let me know which month you are looking to sponsor the site for (if you’re running an advertising campaign for example).

(3) DOWNLOAD UPDATES
I’ve updated the Download page on the main site.
I’ve also implemented a three-server download facility. What it is is three servers which are linked to a reverse-proxy. These servers will serve downloads of the core package (don’t worry, we aren’t getting rid of SourceForge; it’ll be good as an alternative to waiting for SF to copy the packages to all the mirrors).
What the reverse-proxy will do is load-balance the downloads; so if a lot of people are downloading from one server, the next downloader will get it from the next server.
The new page also includes SHA-1 Checksum information for your security. If the checksum is not correct when you download it, let us know ASAP to investigate.
We’ve also archived all the previous versions of Etomite on the site - obviously we don’t advise that you use an old version (as we also don’t support it). They are just provided for archival purposes.
– Links –
http://www.etomite.com/downloads.html

(4) ETOMITE TOOLBAR
We now have a (Firefox and IE) Browser Toolbar available for download; which includes links to our website, and also feeds RSS from our website straight to your browser (so you can see unread posts).
I’ve added the Etomite…Live! Template RSS feed to the toolbar, which should have been pushed to user’s toolbars now - it means that when I release a new template on EtomiteLive.com, it’ll update the RSS feed in your browser so you can go straight to the page.
– Links –
Download the toolbar from: http://etomitecms.communitytoolbars.com/

(5) MONITOR YOUR SITE UPTIME
Want to monitor the uptime of your site? Want to be alerted when it goes down? Sign up for free - you are automatically upgraded for the first 14 days, onto our premium service, then downgraded to the free one after the trial.
Remember, after your trial period, It’ll downgrade you to the free account, which I believe is a single test (60? minute interval). You can choose to upgrade if you wish back up to the professional level (prices are on the site).
– Links –
Visit the site: http://monitoring.etomite.com

(6) UPCOMING RELEASE
If you aren’t a regular reader of the forums, then maybe you should wink.gif
Ralph made an announcement recently regarding the next version of Etomite; It’s not going to be called 0.6.1.5 but actually 1.0
We believe that The Etomite Core has got to the stage where it’s stable.
Therefore; prior to release of 1.0, we need to know if there are any outstanding bugs that have not been addressed. If there are any, it’s vital that you sign up for our bug-tracker and add the issue there.
– Links –
Goto the tracker: http://www.etomite.com/tracker/
Check out the forum thread: http://www.etomite.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7667

(7) NEWSLETTER CLOSURE
Well this is the first Etomite Newsletter; hopefully not the last. It was sent out using IPB’s built in mailer, but I hope to switch to server-side software in the near future.
This year there’s been a few changes - I just hope that you all like the changes in Etomite 1.0! They’re awesome!

Kind Regards,
Dean & Ralph
The Etomite Project