When I first decided that I wanted to venture into the world of custom domains and hosted web space, I did a little browsing and eventually settled on Midphase for my hosting. Let’s just say that my experience with them was less than smooth. It wasn’t a horrible experience, but when the opportunity to leave presented itself, I had no reservations letting go.
That opportunity came in the form of a tweet I happened to notice. It was last November, I think, when someone mentioned that Dreamhost was having an anniversary special. The offer was soon to expire, so I jumped on it. For less than $10 a month, I found myself with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth forever.
That in and of itself was more than enough to kick my old host to the curb. When I got into the control panel for my account, I was doubly happy with my choice to move to Dreamhost. Their console is easier to navigate than the cPanel console Midphase uses. Everything is much more straightforward, and much more user friendly.
There are a lot of features that I could talk about, and it could easily span several blog posts, but I’ll just mention a few of the more eye-catching features here.
One-Click Installs
There’s an Easy mode and an Advanced mode available. In Easy mode, you can’t access the installation files, which means you aren’t able to upload additional themes, plugins, etc., but all upgrades and maintenance is taken care of for you. In Advance mode, you get access to everything, and can do whatever you want. Needless to say, I only use Advanced installations.
The software available in Advanced mode (as of 2009-04-21):
- Wordpress 2.7.1 (Blogging and CMS)
- Gallery 2.3 (Image Gallery)
- ZenCart 1.3.8 (eCommerce Management)
- PhpGedView 4.2 (Geneology Software)
- OpenX 2.6.4 (Ad server)
- Pligg 9.9.5 (CMS with Social Networking)
- dotProject 2.1.1 (Project Management)
- Moodle 1.9.4 (Course/Learning Management)
- Joomla 1.5.9 (Content Management System)
- phpbb 3.0.4 (Forum/Bulletin Board)
- MediaWiki 1.13.4 (Wiki)
- WebCalendar 1.2 (Calendar)
- Advanced Poll 2.03 (Poll/Survey)
I was excited to see MediaWiki listed as the wiki installation of choice for Dreamhost. It’s my preferred wiki platform, and was unavailable as an automatic installation in cPanel’s Fantastico.
Google Apps & GMail
Upon adding a domain or subdomain to your account, Dreamhost gives you the option of using Google Apps to provide their popular Calendar, Docs, and Sites platforms for you domain. 
With just another click, you can have calendar.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com, and sites.yourdomain.com set up.
In addition, you can use GMail to manage your domain’s email. Just another option when you’re adding your domain or subdomain, this lets you use Google’s very popular GMail interface for all of your hosted email accounts. This is what I use for all of my email addresses, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Flash Media
Dreamhost provides a free flash-based media player, similar to what you’d find on YouTube. While it can only play .flv formatted videos, Dreamhost provides an automatic video converter. All you have to do is upload your video to your account – it can be in any of the more popular video formats – and Dreamhost will convert it to .flv for you, ready to be embedded in your website.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a video that I can demonstrate this with, but I hope to be putting some videos together for this site in the near future. When I do, I will definitely be using this feature of my Dreamhost account, instead of uploading my videos to a third-party service like YouTube or Vimeo. And the great thing about it? With unlimited storage and bandwidth, I don’t have to worry about having too many videos.
…And More!
These are just a few examples of what Dreamhost can do. I’ve had no complaints so far; and with the deal I got, I don’t foresee myself moving away from Dreamhost for a long time. If ever.
If you’re looking for your first web hosting service, or are unhappy with your current host, you can click here to give Dreamhost a try!
I love tech, but don’t have as much time or money to spend on it as I’d like. I get what I need to sustain my Geek vicariously through other sources and pass it along to you.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the comment on my Twitip post!
I’m also using Dreamhost and I couldn’t be happier with them. Their support is great and fast, the servers are pretty much stable (you can’t expect a 100% uptime, but they get pretty close) and in overall I’m enjoying the services they’re providing.
They recently had a $9.24/year coupon code for the holidays… too bad you didn’t use that one.
But for anyone else wanting to get hosting from there, they also have a regular discount of $97 for the first year if you pay for a year in advance and find some coupon online (I used “discount97off”), which makes it $22/year, and you even get a free domain. it should be noted that its only for the first year, and after that you pay the normal price.
Shesek