DreamHost offers shell access, but it needs to be specifically enabled for each user. You can either create a new user with shell access enabled, or modify and existing user to have shell. Here’s how:
Enabling Shell Access for an Existing User:

Navigate to “USERS > MANAGE USERS” section of the web panel.
Click the “edit” link [...]

Uploading an entire site or script in a ZIP archive then decompressing via SSH is useful, time-saving, and increases your geek webmaster points by +5. Here’s how to do it:
First you need the right tools and setup: Start by making sure you have Shell access enabled for your domain. You are also going to need [...]

Although you can still use FastCGI, DreamHost now recommends using Passenger to deploy and host Ruby on Rails applications on DreamHost servers.
Enabling Passenger:
To enable Passenger, edit any of your fully hosted domains or add a new domain from the Manage Domains area of the web panel. Check the “Ruby on Rails Passenger (mod_rails)?” option, and [...]

Making a custom error page with DreamHost is easy. DreamHost servers have built-in special file names that, if present in your domain’s root directory, will load automatically when a visitor gets a particular error message on your website.
Here are the special file names:
failed_auth.html - for Error 401 - Failed Authorization
forbidden.html - for Error [...]

PhpBB is one of the most popular free message board applications, and Dreamhost offers it as a “one-click” install from your web panel. Like other database dependent web scripts, phpBB can drain server resources — especially on popular sites.
Here are some tips to help optimize your phpBB forum on Dreamhost (though, the tips will likely [...]

While Dreamhost offers it’s customers an easy way to prevent hotlinking via the web panel, that method is only suitable for basic websites and beginner webmasters that don’t already rely on .htaccess for URL rewriting and other applications often used in CMS / blogging software.
Also the web panel method to prevent hotlinking doesn’t provide users [...]

Hotlinking occurs when a website directly accesses, rather than links to, a file (like an image, or video) on a remote site. In other words if you have an images on your website and other webmasters choose to display those images on their own sites (rather than link to them) it could end up costing [...]

Many web scripts, like blogs and CMSs use and display the time. The problem is that without modifications, the time displayed will be that of the Dreamhost server you are on which is US West Coast time.
If you would rather have your scripts run and display your local time you can modify your .htaccess file [...]

If you have made changes to your website, but can not view them, you may need to clear your browser’s cache, or force the page to reload from the server. The following tutorials show the steps to clear your browser’s cache depending on the platform:
First, try a simple force-reload:

Linux: F5
Windows: CTRL + F5
[...]

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a common server-side scripting language. If you are working with web scripts, like Wordpress, Joomla, Pligg, etc. — then your site is probably using PHP. For advanced users and those that like to break modify scripts, knowing what PHP versions and modules are available from their host may be important. [...]