I just read an interesting post on the Official DreamHost Blog entitled “One-Click Mystery“. (the post had a chart — so I was immediately intrigued):

Dallas Kashuba explained DreamHost users are using our One-Clicks less and less, with newer customers using this feature significantly less than users who signed up in ‘05/’06.

“The clear trend we see is a mostly upward trend with a spike in usage by accounts signed up in 2006, and then a pretty quick drop-off over the last couple of years.”

The post ends with a call for us DreamHosters to comment on why we do or do not use one-click installs.

Like many of the commenters, I do use DreamHost’s one-click install features, especially for Wordpress. Not that I can’t install Wordpress the old fashion way; I’ve probably done it close to a hundred times over the last 4 years. I use one-click installs because it is soooo easy to do Wordpress updates this way. One-click upgrades for all my Wordpress installs can be done all at once via DreamHost’s one-click feature. I love that!

I can understand why other folks don’t use one-click installs: too many theme files installed is a big gripe of mine for DreamHost’s default Wordpress install. But, that pain is outweighed by the multiple site one-click upgrades.

Check out the original post on the DreamHost Blog to see what other customers are saying, and share your opinion on why you do or don’t use one-click installs. Also take a look at my previous post about one-click upgrades with instructions.

When troubleshooting your website, it is useful to know how many CPU resources are being consumed by that site. If you are a webmaster like me, you are likely to use your DreamHost account to host multiple websites.

One of the problems an account with many hosted domains can have is tracking down which particular user/domain is at fault when a server resource issue arises. If we could see how much resources each user/domain used individually, we would have a better shot at fixing issues.

By default DreamHost combines all users into their resource reports (how to access these reports is at the end of this post). If you want to know the resources used by an individual user/domain — you’ll need to enable it manually.

Enabling Individual User Resource Reporting:

To enable user resource reporting for a particular user:

1. Navigate to  USERS > MANAGE USERS via the Web Panel
2. One the right, click on the Edit button for the user account in question.
3. Find and check the box labeled “CPU Reporting”.
4. Finish by clicking on “Save Changes”.

Rinse and repeat for each user you would like individual resource reporting. Remember: you’ll need to wait at least 24 hours before these reports are generated and accessible.

Now you can see exactly how much processor time a user/domain consumes on the server. The report comes in two forms named either USER.sa.itemized.X or USER.sa.analyzed.X . The x represents how many days back the file was created.

This itemized report contains a line for each time a script was run on the server, plus how much CPU time was used to execute that script. While, the analyzed report totals processor time for each unique executable and sorts based on CPU time.

Fancy, eh?

Accessing User Resource Reports:

These reports can be found in: /home/user/logs/resources – and can be accessed via FTP or Shell.

Note: This feature isn’t available to DreamHost PS users.

We’ve picked the brains belonging to some of the rising stars in online marketing and asked them to participate in a series of roundtable interviews.

We just completed putting together their answers to our first question: “What do you know now that you wish someone had told you when you started out as a webmaster?”

Read what are interviewees had to say in our first webmaster interviews.

If you have registered or host a domain with DreamHost and would like to host it with your .Mac/iWeb 08 account, you can do so using the following steps:

The first step is to log into your .Mac/iWeb account page and then click the “Use personal domain” option - enter your domain name into the given field.

Next, log into your DreamHost web panel and navigate to the Manage Domains section. Clicking the “delete” button that appears next to your domain under the ‘Web Hosting’ column, will remove the Dreamhost hosting service from your domain.

After you’ve removed the web hosting service, click the “DNS” link that appears under your domain (you may need to leave and come page to the page before the link appears).

Under the DNS options, enter in www in the Name: field.  Change the Type to CNAME and enter in web.me.com into the Value: field.

Click the “Add Record Now!” button to finish. Your done. Everything should be in working order after  the DNS propagates.

I just came across a handy tool for DreamHost users called ip-abuse-lookup.sh. This shell script analyzes error and access logs for a domain, looking for the IP addresses that have connected to your site the most often.

It checks for IP addresses that cause a Concurrent Connection Limit Exceeded error, which is a strong indication they are an automated bot of some kind. The script also scans for Internal Recursion Errors which can have very negatively effect your speed and server resources often caused by poorly configured .htaccess files.

After the script finishes scanning your logs, it will present you with the .htaccess code you can add to your site’s root .htaccess file to block the IP addresses the script found to be abusive.

For more info: DreamHost wiki page for ip-abuse-lookup.sh - with detailed instructions and full source code.

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:

1. Navigate to “USERS > MANAGE USERS” section of the web panel.
2. Click the “edit” link next to the user you want to enable shell access for.
3. Check the “Enable ssh/telnet?” box for that user, leaving the “Type” as is — unless you need it to be something other than bash.
4. Click “Save Changes”.

Creating a New User with Shell Access:

1. Navigate to “USERS > MANAGE USERS” section of the web panel.
2. Click “Add New User”.
3. Check the “Shell account” option, leaving the “Type” as is — unless you need it to be something other than bash.
4. Choose a username for the person. This will be there login.
5. Enter the full name of the user you’re creating the account for.
6. You can let the web panel generate a password for this user or choose one yourself.
7. Click the “Add User” button.

Ta da! Yes, it’s that easy.
Remember that it can take about 20 minutes for these changes to take effect.

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 a SSH client — for Windows users we recommend PuTTY, it’s free. (For Mac or Unix check out this info on how to access SSH.)

Now take the ZIP file, and FTP it to the directory you want the files decompressed to. After it has finished uploading, run PuTTY. Enter the domain and use your FTP login and password to get in.

You will now see the [server]$ prompt, with [server] being the name of your server eg [sprite]$.
Now type the following:

[server]$ ls

- This will display a list of your directories.

Now type:

[server]$ cd subdomain.domain.com

- cd being the command to Change Directory. And subdomain.domain.com being the name of the directory you uploaded your ZIP file to.

Next enter:

[server]$ ls

You should see the name of the ZIP file you uploaded. Now enter:

[server]$ unzip yourfilename.zip

Depending on how many files are in the zip, it might take a while to finish. But, when it does you will have all your files decompressed, exactly where you wanted them. Fancy, eh?

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 save.

Once Passenger has been enabled for your domain, set the web directory to the “public” directory of the RoR app.

Notes: Only enable this option if you are running a Ruby on Rails app as the main application for a specific domain or sub-domain.

In other words: you want to access your RoR application via myapp.mydomainatDH.com or mydomainatDH.com, not as: mydomainatDH.com/path-to-myapp.

For more info see: the wiki entry on Passenger

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 403 - Forbidden
missing.html - for Error 404 - File Not Found
internal_error.html - for Error 500 - Internal Server Error

For instance, if you wanted to make a custom 404 error page, create a file called missing.html and place it in your site’s root directory. Edit missing.html to look and include anything you wish.

Why would you want to create custom error pages?
Instead of a visitor getting a generic 404 File Not Found Error, you could make a custom 404 page that shows your sitemap and/or offers a search form. Now you are re-directing that lost visitor back to your content.

Notes: When creating links on your custom error pages…make your links absolute rather than relative.
In other words, use something like: a href=”http://mydomainatDH.com/mypage.php” rather than ../mypage.php

Advanced users may wish to create custom error pages the old fashion way, via .htaccess — but we will cover that in a future tutorial.

You can also turn off this feature by editing your .htaccess file to include the following lines of code:
ErrorDocument 401 default
ErrorDocument 403 default
ErrorDocument 404 default
ErrorDocument 500 default

For more info see: the DreamHost Wiki

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 work equally as well with other hosts):

Optimization Tips for PhpBB:

1. Remove any mods that you don’t use.
2. Disable the search function for guests. Only allow it only for registered users.
3. Optimize your database via PhpMyAdmin.
4. Busy forums with lots of members could benifet from the advanced optimization tips located here.

Troubleshooting:

Spam can be huge problem with phpBB installs. Some mods such as the RAC mod can add an extra layer of protection to fight spam registrations.

Also, for security purposes: remember to keep your version of phpBB up to date. Dreamhost makes it easy (one-click upgrades), so you don’t have any excuses.

For more info check out the DreamHost Wiki’s page on phpBB.