Explosions Sunday at an oil depot located north of London, England knocked some prominent Web sites offline, said a Monday report by Netcraft. The blasts reportedly damaged a data center operated by Web hosting firm Northgate Information Services, taking the sites for audio retailer Richer Sounds and the UK Labour Party down for more than 24 hours. Northgate said its data center, and the fixtures inside, had been badly damaged along with its backup systems. The company said it was restoring services through disaster recovery centers located around the country.

Northgate was the only company widely reported to have been affected by the explosions, and the rest of Web hosting's week dealt more with the movement of assets and the introduction of new features.

On Wednesday, it was reported that wholesale Internet service provider Tucows had signed an agreement to pay $8 million for the hosted messaging assets of Critical Path. Tucows says the additional assets will make the company a leader in hosted email, especially for Web hosts and service providers. Tucows will maintain Critical Path's data centers in Denver, Colorado and London, England. Critical Path says it will shift its focus to software development.

On Tuesday, Web hosting Provider LocalNet announced that it had completed its acquisition of the Internet access and Web hosting customers of CoreComm, providing CoreComm customers with access to LocalNet's dialup network, and LocalNet's customers with access to CoreComm's business services. LocalNet says it will continue to operate both brands, with CoreComm customers served by a new company called CoreComm Internet Services.

Also on Tuesday, Web hosting provider EarthLink announced that it had acquired virtual private network provider New Edge Networks for $144 million in cash and stocks. EarthLink says the deal adds a customer base that will generate $120 million in revenue this year. The company believes the combined assets of EarthLink and New Edge will enable it to target growing demand for high-speed access and VPN services among small and home offices. New Edge, and its 345 employees, will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of EarthLink.

While several companies added new capabilities through the acquisition of existing service providers, several Web hosts added new features developed in-house or through partnerships this week.

On Monday, Web host CrystalTech announced that it had introduced a new management tool for ordering and installing SSL Certificates. The tool can be accessed through CrystalTech's control panel, which enables customers to create and process certificate signing requests, order CTssl certificates and automatically install certificates. CTssl is the low-cost SSL certificate offered by the company in partnership with XRamp Technologies.

Also on Monday, Yahoo! announced that it would integrate the Movable Type blogging software into its Web hosting services, with Yahoo! becoming Movable Type's preferred hosting provider for small businesses. Movable Type says it has optimized its software for the Yahoo! hosting environment, improving performance substantially over a typical hosting environment. The companies say Movable Type is preferred by small businesses to other services, such as Blogger or Live Journal, which are more focused on Individuals.

On Wednesday, Web hosting provider NaviSite announced it has launched a formalized help desk service for enterprise applications and desktop customers. The company says its application help desk support services serve questions related to Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Seibel. NaviSite experts answer a variety of level-one inquiries, supporting end users for account creation, modification and termination, as well as general application and security questions. The company also launched help desk support for desktops, offering full end-user support for account management and other troubleshooting activities.

And on Thursday, Web host Aplus.Net announced it had released a new marketing tool, eCommerce Booster for Miva Merchant 5, designed to provide Miva users with enhanced Web site indexing capabilities, improving the search engine rankings of their online stores. The product features include automatic meta tag insertion, automatic search engine submission of store pages and the automatic creation of a Google Sitemap.

The alarming and unfortunate situation at Northgate notwithstanding, the big focus in this Week's Web hosting news was the development of new services, whether by acquisition, partnership or internal development. The story that will continue to captivate, however, will likely be the Northgate situation, as the company weighs its options for dealing with the damage to its facilities.