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.

DreamHost now offer their own VPS product, DreamHost Private Servers.

Dreamhost Private Servers seem to exist somewhere between a shared hosting environment, and a VPS. A true VPS would also allow root access and the ability to run your own software on the server (such as cpanel, Plesk, etc).

With Dreamhost PS you don’t get the “fully yours” features but that has it’s own advantages such as Dreamhost’s control panel, 1 click installs, and all the other goodies in a standard Dreamhost account. You can also restart your server, and it’s got a groovy web 2.0 slider to set how much RAM/storage you get, which means you can scale up as you need more resources.

If you find yourself taking up too much server resources, or you have an suspicion that somebody else on your server is using too many resources and slowing down your sites this could be a great addition to your Dreamhost account.

According to Dreamhost here is a guideline for how much dedicated CPU/RAM typical websites need:

• 150 MB / 150 Mhz: 99% of all predominantly static sites. (e.g. www.dreamhost.com)
• 300 MB / 300 Mhz: A top 100 blog. (e.g. blog.dreamhost.com)
• 515 MB / 515 Mhz: A busy forum. (e.g. discussion.dreamhost.com)
• 2300 MB / 2300 Mhz: A very popular web app. (e.g. panel.dreamhost.com)

I am seriously considering leaving my current VPS at PowerVPS.com which I pay $45/mo for and moving to Dreamhost (which I use for some of my smaller sites and as a back-up server) and upgrading to “Dreamhost PS”.

Dreamhost also offers a service called “DreamHost PS MySQL” with the same sort of memory and cpu isolation from DreamHost PS for your MySQL databases. If you’re site is database heavy you may be interested in this feature.

Currently Dreamhost PS is invite only, unless you are already a Dreamhost customer. Current customers can login to web panel and upgrade to a private server.

Further Reading:

Apache Webmaster’s shares his experience in upgrading to Dreamhost PS and offers some troubleshooting advice.

Dreamhost Private Servers specs & info - From DH

Does Dreamhost allow reselling of their services?

Yes - While Dreamhost doesn’t offer specific reseller plans, customers may use any Dreamhost hosting plan for the purpose of reselling.

As long as you remain within your bandwidth, storage and CPU cycle quotes, any DreamHost user is allowed to use their account to resell hosting. If you are looking to get your feet wet as a host, or have clients that need hosting, this may be a great solution for you.

How Does Reselling through Dreamhost Work?

Sign up for hosting with DreamHost (use the promo code MAXSAVINGS to save $50), then begin finding your own hosting clients. It will be your job to bill your customers directly, and decide on pricing.

Within your control panel, You’ll be able to give each of your hosting customers their own FTP user to point the domain to and to give them their own web panel access with restricted access to only their services.

You can also simply refer new customers to Dreamhost and earn cash.

Further Reading:

Article about Reselling on the Dreamhost Wiki

Many users have a story about why they love DreamHost’s customer service. This DreamHost-themed meme lists some of our favorite reasons why DreamHost rocks.

Forget other web hosts with too-good-to-be-true introductory offers. Free software! Free domain transfers! We’ll send your mother-in-law flowers!

Enough. For us, the big difference with DreamHost is the sheer number of features DreamHost users get gratis. Ask other hosts to match this and you’ll likely get an awkward silence.

So take a deep breath. Here’s 55 reasons why DreamHost rocks.

1. Wowzer that’s cheap. Except ‘cheap’ might imply poor-quality, so let’s go with the less-catchy-more-precise "Quality hosting from $5.95/month"
2. More bandwidth. A cool 5 terabytes/month, minimum. Yes, terabytes.
3. More disk space. 500 GB, minimum - 6.25x the size of the latest fancy pants iPod.
4. Full PHP support. PHP5, or PHP4 for the old-school.
5. Unlimited MySQL databases. Host all your Advanced Dungeons & Dragons league tables in one place. Or database-driven sites. Your choice.
6. Full CGI access. Perl and Python scripts run free, as nature intended.
7. Unlimited sites. Host all your *cough* specialist sites in one place.
8. Unlimited domain/sub-domain hosting. Gather round, gang - everyone’s invited!
9. Free domain name. Because freebie gimmicks sometimes work.
10. One-click installs. 100% automatic setup for Wordpress, Joomla, PHPbb, MediaWiki, Zen Cart, Gallery, activeCollab, WebCalendar & Advanced Poll.
11. Snapshot backups. We love this: automated hourly, daily & weekly quick ‘n’ dirty backups for all your sites.
12. Htaccess support. Handy for auto-rewriting clean URLs in Wordpress etc.
13. Free private WHOIS hosting. Go Daddy charge $4.99 per year per domain for this. Go figure.
14. Ruby On Rails support. All the Web 2.0 cool kids are using it, you know.
15. Unlimited email aliases. Setup 100s of emails for your so-called ‘friends’.
16. Full Unix shell. Perfect for a Tron-style geek off or, um, using Linux.
17. POP3 / SMTP email. Works with everything from Outlook to Gmail.
18. IMAP access. Server-hosted email, if that rocks your world.
19. SpamAssassin filtering. One click turns you into a spam-fighting ninja*.
    *Please check your medical insurance covers spam ninja activities first.
20. AWStats web analytics. Rough ‘n’ ready web stats ready to roll.
21. YouTube-style media player. Easily embed video and audio on sites.
22. Server-Side Includes (SSI) aka ‘Poor Man’s PHP’.
23. DreamHost Blog/Newsletters. Fact: Both are far funnier than this site.
24. Custom DNS. Remember: with great power comes great responsibility.
25. Unlimited auto-responders. Reply to emails from pesky friends and family members with zero thought or effort.
26. Free domain forwarding. Can you believe some hosts charge for this stuff?
27. Squirrel Mail webmail. Like Hotmail never happened.
28. Custom errors. Create quick ‘n’ easy 404 pages without touching the dreaded .htaccess.
29. SSL Secure Server. Essential if you’re serious about e-commerce (you’ll need a unique IP, too).
30. Files Forever. Share or sell your digital downloads in seconds (NB. DreamHost takes 5% + $0.50 transaction fee on sales)
31. Unlimited discussion lists. Yadda, yadda, yadda to your heart’s content c/o industry standard GNU Mailman software.
32. Raw log files. A must for non-hosted web analytics, like WebTrends.
33. Image Magick. PHP image processing library ready to go.
34. Procmail. Complex email filtering for geeks who make Linux gags. You know who you are.
35. QuickTime streaming, using Apple’s Darwin engine.
36. RealAudio/RealVideo streaming. Use a non-proprietry format, already!
37. Guestbooks. We hate ‘em - but, hey, *somebody* must still use them.
38. FrontPage extensions. Our Frontpage amnesty starts today.
39. Enhanced security. Mod_security keeps h4×0rs from pwning your sites.
40. Anonymous FTP server. You’ll need a unique IP address.
41. Canned CGI scripts. Including all your favourites, like Formmail & friends.
42. Crontab access. Crons let you run automated tasks at a set time or date, like indexing your site or making hot coffee in the mornings (perhaps).
43. Unlimited Subversion repositories (SVN). Open-source version control.
44. CVS repositories. Industry standard version control for larger sites.
45. WebDAV support. *More* version control. WebDAV integrates with Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver.
46. Custom MX records. Host your email elsewhere, if you insist.
47. Jabber IM. Setup your own instant messenger server in seconds.
48. DreamHostStatus.com. 24/7 updates on uptime, downtime and, um, sidewaystime. Possibly.
49. Secure FTP. Don your tin foil hat and encrypt your FTP traffic to keep it from THE MAN.
50. DreamHost Site of the Month. Traffic for nothing & your clicks for free.
51. User suggestions. Vote on which new features you want.
52. Charidee. DreamHost match all your donations to their chosen charities.
53. We’re not convinced anyone will read all 55 reasons, so we’ve snuck this one in to bulk up the numbers. Keep it to yourself, eh?
54. 97 day money back guarantee. But we’ll crack up if you leave us after everything we’ve been through together.
55. Did we mention ‘cheap hosting’? Oh. We did.

(Dear readers - We love submissions like this, so keep ‘em coming!)

While researching DreamNut blog posts, we stumbled across this April Fools’ Day gem from 2006 in the DreamHost Wiki.

Los Angeles, CA - Web hosting provider DreamHost Web Hosting (dreamhost.com), announced on Friday it has decided to merge with Go Daddy corporation. The new company will be named Go Dream Daddy Host (GoDream-DaddyHost.com).

A related Go Daddy Press Release said:

“What we really want to achieve is a top ranking blog,” said Go Daddy CEO and founder Bob Parsons. Traffic to blog.dreamhost.com has been beating us, except during superbowls, consistently since 2004. With Josh Jones and company we can take it up a notch with the younger, hipper thing. Their Ninja theme fits my military background, and let’s face it, DreamHost, like Go Daddy Girls, personifies the definition of GoDaddy-esque, which is edgy, racy and a touch inappropriate.”

“Our business is based on providing the best possible service at the lowest possible price. This strategy requires us to maximize all of our resources, particularly our technology assets,” said Sage Weil, DreamHost president and COO. “And those Go Daddy Girls are really hot.”

Nobody really noticed last year when we moved more than 240,000 hosted domains to Cygwin on a Microsoft Windows server platform. So, we figured why not go for it,” said Dallas Bethune, CTO. “It greatly simplifies the development of dynamic websites, fits in perfectly with the range of services we already offer, and those Go Daddy Girls are really hot.”

“I thought I had enough problems with one blog to police,” said Jeff Campbell, Abuse Department spokesman, “so handling two company blogs will be a major challenge. But I do look forward to complaints about the Go Daddy Girls, who are really hot.”

About The Go Daddy Group, Inc.

Go Daddy® is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration and Web site hosting services, as well as a broad array of on-demand and other services. The Go Daddy Group, Inc. has more than 19 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers a domain name every 2 seconds. GoDaddy.com is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. GoDaddy.com is also rated the world’s largest hostname provider according to Netcraft® Ltd. During 2006, The Go Daddy Group registered approximately one-third of all domain names registered in the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info.

About DreamHost

DreamHost provides web hosting, dedicated server and domain name registration services to more than 470,000 domains worldwide. The company offers customized service plans for hobbyists, entertainers, creative professionals and small businesses, and free plans for certified non-profits. All DreamHost plans feature a customizable web panel (v. 3.0) which gives customers unsurpassed personalization and manageability of their data.

For more information, please visit http://www.dreamhost.com/

As you’ll have noticed, DreamNut has been quiet since late 2007. Blogger Eric (of Pligg fame) has graciously passed the site on so a new team can take over his good work.

Regular posting will resume later this month - watch this space! In the meantime, let us know any DreamHost tutorials, hints or tips you’d like us to cover.

Pligg, the content management system that I co-founded nearly two years ago, has been added to the Dreamhost one click install program. For those of you who don’t know, Pligg is an open source CMS that lets you create a Digg-like site in just a few minutes. It’s a highly social CMS that generally relies on a community of people to contribute and vote on articles. The stories with enough votes are promoted to the front page. The collaborative nature of Pligg separates it from most other CMS packages where news items are submitted by site-sponsored editors.

Now you can setup Pligg easier than ever. Unfortunately the installation process could be simplified even more, but we are working on this shortcoming to make installation even easier in the near future. Haven’t taken Pligg for a test run yet? Give it a whirl and leave a comment to let me know what you think of it, or head on over to the Pligg Forums.