DreamHost Discussion Board

Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

mkwick — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:40:00 -0700

Thanks guys, this will help alot!

Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

KenXC — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:54:02 -0700

I just moved my WordPress blog over from 1and1 a few days ago. All you have to do is backup your db and files, edit the config.php, look for references to your old host's files in the db and replace, and reupload the files.

Re: UDP ports

sdayman — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:14:04 -0700

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Not on a shared server, that's for sure.

Oh, and we're just customers here. You can submit a support ticket if you really want to be extra sure.

-Scott

UDP ports

spandor — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:43:06 -0700

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Hi
Do you open UDP ports on your servers if requested?

Re: support requests

dcappe — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:47:37 -0700

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sorry Lensman my mistake.

Re: Need help deciding to use DH-PS

Lensman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:16:19 -0700

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In reply to:
I've just signed up for DH-PS, can anyone tell me how long it takes to be provisioned? Is it still weeks (I hope not!!!)

I think I read in the most recent newsletter that Dreamhost had worked through the backlog...

Wait, here it is!

In reply to:
Because, believe it or not, we've (pretty much) gotten alllll the way
through our back log of pre-orders for DreamHost PS (see
http://www.dreamhostps.com/) and are ready to get new people provisioned
relatively quickly!

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Re: support requests

Lensman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:14:28 -0700

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In reply to:
I don't mean to sound irritated by this but you can't call dreamhost and now you're telling me you can't email either? - seriously - you can't email dreamhost for help? email? is it not a part of your package?

You're writing this as if you're talking to Dreamhost employees, but we're just your fellow customers...

In reply to:
I figured dreamhost would use all the features available to them, even something as wacky and out there as email. I've heard it could catch on big time. You should jump on board before you get left behind!

I don't think we're saying anything about what you can and can't do, we're just letting you know what we've experienced and heard are the fastest and best ways of communicating with support. I imagine that there's both lots of spam and lots of lost email due to misidentification as spam at the email address that you mention.

It's certainly not unreasonable to hope for responses from that email, but common sense says that we should try the forms of communication that are listed as the ones that work the best.

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Re: Need help deciding to use DH-PS

mr_d_n — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:13:51 -0700

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I've just signed up for DH-PS, can anyone tell me how long it takes to be provisioned? Is it still weeks (I hope not!!!)

Re: support requests

dcappe — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:56:08 -0700

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support@dreamhost.com - since I've had to email back and forth with dreamhost countless numbers of times over the past 7 years with downtime/connectivity issues - it seemed like a logical place to start since I couldn't log in.

I don't mean to sound irritated by this but you can't call dreamhost and now you're telling me you can't email either? - seriously - you can't email dreamhost for help? email? is it not a part of your package? I figured dreamhost would use all the features available to them, even something as wacky and out there as email. I've heard it could catch on big time. You should jump on board before you get left behind!

Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

sXi — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:22:07 -0700

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"probably better than I could write it"...

Not a chance. You could do a far better job Robert!

How much free time do you have these days mate? Extra wrinkles yet? Grey hairs?

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Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

rlparker — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:24:07 -0700

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In addition to the excellent resources Scott provided, I want to point you to WordPress's own codex for a great discussion of what is involved.

This WordPress Codex article on Moving WordPress covers it all, and probably better than I could write it. Highly recommended!

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

Re: Domain Registration Only

dwr — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:28:15 -0700

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Confirmed... I have had a few domains registered with Dreamhost even while my hosting account was closed, and you could set the nameservers to whatever you'd like.

I personally think Dreamhost makes a super fine "domain registrar only", the price is right with the included privacy and you know the support will treat you well if you need them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain

Re: Domain Registration Only

Lensman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:21:08 -0700

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Note that it does not include DNS services, but if you're hosted elsewhere, you should be able to set the nameservers to your host's nameservers.

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Re: Domain Registration Only

sdayman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:41:01 -0700

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It's just the registration, which includes the free option of anonymous proxy to hide your WHOIS info.

-Scott

Domain Registration Only

Brik182 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:41:20 -0700

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Hey all, I'm just curious about the "Domain Registration Only."

What's included in that? I'm just interested in having dreamhost as my registrar as I'm hosted somewhere else.

Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

mkwick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:18:12 -0700

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okay, thanks, I appreciate the direction.
I will look at the options, happily email is one thing I wont have to move...

thanks! mkwick

Re: Fear and moving site? Wordpress

sdayman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:23:47 -0700

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Excluding email, which is challenging, you need to copy over your domain directory, and the database:
If you have Shell access at both ends:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Rsync_Backup
Otherwise, you'll have to FTP everything home, and then here, unless you have FXP which lets you connect to both servers at the same time to copy stuff over.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Backup_Website_Manually

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Migrate_MySQL

-Scott

Fear and moving site? Wordpress

mkwick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:51:05 -0700

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I was not sure where to post this, so here it goes. I am already a member, however I am overseeing a 1.5.1 Wordpress site on another host. I want to move the Wordpress site to Dreamhost. Now, whats the easiest way to move such a site over without losing all its content. I am nervous because the site has over a quarter of a million hits on it and has had content added to it for about 6 years, and so losing any data would be terrible.

Can anyone point me to a safe procedure. Id like to get it up and running as a copy of the original site and then transfer the domain and sync it all.

Wisdom is appreciated! Mkwick

Re: DH WORKS: A one year anniversary RAVE

tomt — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:39:56 -0700

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I've had only one other hosting service so lack your experience to make a worthwhile comparison but short of one minor glitch the service is near perfect.
The glitch? I am currently utilising 0% of disk space - since it is growing _much_ faster than I can produce web pages I shall be doomed to be the 'Zero Percent User'.

Re: support requests

patricktan — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:34:42 -0700

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If you can log in before, you can try to clear your cache and log in again.

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Re: support requests

Lensman — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:30:55 -0700

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Where have you been sending your emails?

As Scott points out, the contact form is the best substitute for the panel when you can't get in.

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Re: support requests

sdayman — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:47:00 -0700

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Email isn't an effective way to contact support. Try:
http://www.dreamhost.com/contact.cgi

-Scott

p.s. Most of us get great service, provided we use appropriate channels of communication. Heck, even someone was commenting that they got a sales response on the weekend!

Edited by sdayman on 07/20/08 12:49 PM (server time).

support requests

dcappe — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:33:48 -0700

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I sent 5 emails to dreamhost support last week over 7 days due to problems not being able to log into the web panel - and to date I have received a total of 0 responses. Nothing! NADA! Anyone else had such good service lately?

I couldn't log in so I couldn't open a ticket - dreamhoststatus had nothing on it so there was no way for me to address the problem other than send an email from a previous complaint to the support team. I still can't access the webpanel from the main dreamhost.com page and get an error when I try to log in or send myself a password reminder. The only way I've found to get into the site is to hit "contact us" on dreamhost.com front page and then log in from the webpanel on the side.

Re: xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

fil_razorback — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:04:02 -0700

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Thank you very much to both of you, this board is more reactive than I thought it would be =)

I'll probably sign up and do as much performance analysis as I can - I hope things will go well enough for me not to use the "97 days cancel" nor move onto a dedicated server.

Edited by fil_razorback on 07/20/08 09:05 AM (server time).

Re: xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

Lensman — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:54:12 -0700

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In reply to:
What I call "the CPU minutes things" is that no hosted website should penalize other hosted websites by using too many CPU minutes per day. My problem is that I do not know how much it takes to be "penalizing other websites".

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

So as independent says, we not subject to a fixed limit of CPU here at Dreamhost - either on the web servers or the mysql servers. This doesn't mean that support doesn't have a guideline for CPU usage that they use to target sites as having "impact" on other sites, just that this guideline involves their own judgment about the frequency of such impact and such.

Performance analysis is a complex and difficult undertaking. Most people aren't up to the challenge. Heck, most developers aren't up to the challenge and just code things the best they know how and deliver their applications to the operations department for them to analyze. :)

There are certainly tools out there for you to determine the performance profile of your forum - especially since you've got the ability to add diagnostic code yourself since you're the developer!

Beyond that, you can always contact pre-sales support using the pre-sales contact form to find out what their guidelines are for this sort of thing - they have much more experience with this than us customers. But you might also consider opening a trial account. If you use a credit/debit card or Google Checkout, you will have 97 days to do your performance analysis and still be able to get your money back should you figure out that your needs are beyond shared web hosting.

But speaking of which, what's your alternative. I think all shared web hosts limit their usage to that which doesn't impact other customers on their shared servers. The difference is that they are either case-by-case or have hard CPU limits. Generally, the case-by-case ones are more generous in their interpretation of the limits (but as a result I think they sometimes have more support calls due customers who are hosting stuff that way too much for shared hosting), but it's certainly the case that the ones with hard limits have slight differences in their limits.

Beyond shared web hosts are the VPS and dedicated hosting options. In each case, you decide how much server you need and pay for it. Even Dreamhost has their Private Servers option in addition to dedicated hosting. With either of these types of hosting you can host stuff that's beyond what you can host on shared hosting - and generally get better performance characteristics as well.

The only other option you have is home-based hosting. I find this to be:
1. cheaper
2. harder
3. less reliable
4. have lower bandwidth

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Re: xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

independent — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:57:42 -0700

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I don't think there is a hard limit, or a specific quantity of processing time. The issue is whether or not the site interferes with other webmasters' sites. I don't think my Dreamhost sites have ever come close to any kind of limits but I had a similar experience one day that 17,000 digg users decided to show up on a Joomla blog I had hosted on another shared server.

Every five minutes they were shutting down my site for five minutes because of excessive CPU usage and I was able to stop that from happening just by de-activating an inefficiently coded addon-module (that I ended up getting rid of).

I guess it sounds like a good way to test your code's efficiency? This is something almost impossible to predict, but its a good reminder why backups and redundancy are important.

~
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Re: xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

fil_razorback — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:14:37 -0700

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What I call "the CPU minutes things" is that no hosted website should penalize other hosted websites by using too many CPU minutes per day. My problem is that I do not know how much it takes to be "penalizing other websites".
"simpler than phpBB" was also supposed to mean "more efficient" since I do code clean things and that my forum is not bloated (unlike phpBB).

My current host (it's a french ISP which provides "decent" hosting for free) doesnt let me know neither how much I use their CPU nor what their hardware is, but this doesnt matter much since my board isn't open yet (I'm the only user so far).

Re: xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

Lensman — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:39:27 -0700

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In reply to:
The CPU minutes things bothers me a bit because I had never heard of it before (I'm not very experienced and I suppose it shows).

What do you mean by "the CPU minutes things"? As far as I know, Dreamhost does not have a set limit on the number of CPU minutes each account is allowed to consume. There's just the case-by-case analysis of whether your site negatively impacts the server you're on and also the ban against any single long running process.

200 unique visitors per day might be ok, but if your "simpler than phpBB" discussion board is very inefficient, it could run into trouble with 20 visitors per day. OTOH, if it's efficient or if the visitors are spread out through the day, 2000 unique visitors might be ok. Well, actually I think 2000 active participants to a dynamic display board might be a bit much, I admit.

What kind of CPU utilization are you seeing on your current host? What hardware are they running?

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xx CPU minutes, how much is that ?

fil_razorback — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:08:14 -0700

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Hello,
I'm a potential customer for Dreamhost and I've been reading a lot of stuff about their (/your, depends on who you are) business. The CPU minutes things bothers me a bit because I had never heard of it before (I'm not very experienced and I suppose it shows).

The website I plan to host would come with a discussion board (which I coded myself) relying on PHP and MySQL. All those posts about MySQL and excessive CPU minutes make me wonder if my board is going to cause issues because I am not used to this measurement at all (so maybe my question is going to sound totally stupid).

Let's say my discussion board is similar to phpBB (a bit simpler though), and that it gets around 200 unique visitors (users) per day. Would that run fine ?

PS : Excuse my poor english, this is not my first language.

Re: Need help deciding to use DH-PS

marcus0263 — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:15:10 -0700

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I VERY highly recommend using both VPS and the VPS for MySQL. I'm running Drupal myself and the biggest improvement I received was with the MySQL VPS. Drupal crawls on Dreamhost on their standard shared hosting and MySQL.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Re: DH WORKS: A (one month) anniversary RAVE

kj0613 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:59:15 -0700

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I have only been with DH for a month but have been very impressed. I am not all that knowledgeable about webhosting, but did have another site with another host, and knew what I did and didn't want to experience again. All I can say is that DH is wonderful. Before I decided to join, I sent a message to the sales staff late on a Saturday night. I figured it would be Monday afternoon before I had a response. Instead I got one less than twenty minutes later. Impressed? You bet.

Because I don't know nearly as much as I would like to (if I knew half of what you've probably forgotten, MEK, I would triple my knowledge), but answers have been easy to find, either through the discussion forums or through the wiki.

Likewise, because of my previous experience with another web host I know that when someone has a problem, nine times out of ten it's because of something they're doing wrong. So when I have a problem my first instinct is not to blame DH, but to look for answers. Guess what? When I get them, I AM doing something wrong. When I fix my mistake, everything goes perfectly.

In short, am I happy with DH? You bet. Will I be with them for a long time? You bet. Will I recommend them to others? No, because I already DO recommend them to others. Their reputation is my reputation and I sleep very well, and very happily.

Long live DH!

Ken

Re: questions for potential new user

Lensman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:03:48 -0700

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In reply to:
4- can I manage more than 1 hosting account from a single web control panel?
5- can I have more than 1 credit card on file with separate billing addresses, etc.?

Could you clarify what you're looking to do?

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Re: questions for potential new user

sdayman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:00:15 -0700

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1) The inbox seems to be limited to one thousand or so messages, but other boxes created in IMAP don't have this limitation. Max disk space is configured via quotas, so this is only limited to your disk space (500 or so gigs)

2) There's a referral system:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Category:Billing

3) Terms of Service limit disk space to domain-hosted services, such as email, databases, and website content. So, no, you can't just store whatever files you like.

4) Dunno, but why would you want to? Dreamhost hasn't always been clear about how many accounts you can have, but if it's legit, the don't seem to mind. The Panel appears to support multiple accounts for a single user.

5) The panel does not make it appear that it can remember more than one credit card. Same goes for billing address(es). I can't blame them, as this would appear to be a suspicious setup. Some one person needs to be responsible for the account.

-Scott

questions for potential new user

Om_Audio — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:07:42 -0700

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Hi- I have been using PowWeb for myself and my clients for about 7 years- overall been good but considering switching to new preferred host for various reasons.

1- email box sizes- what are the max email inbox sizes and are they user defineable?
2- referrals- is there a referral system and what sort of incentives are offered?
3- FTP usage- can I use my FTP to store whatever files I like or is it limited to website related materials?
4- can I manage more than 1 hosting account from a single web control panel?
5- can I have more than 1 credit card on file with separate billing addresses, etc.?

Thanks-

Om

Re: Presales question - G-Forge and LDAP?

ShawnIngram — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:12:18 -0700

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Yeah, I'm curious about anyone successfully running GForge on DreamHost as well. I found info on Robert Nelson's mysql patch for 4.5 in the GForge patches (http://gforge.org/tracker/?group_id=1&atid=106&func=detail&aid=2748) and a branch of the SVN titled 4_6-mysql but with all the possible issues with the manual install, I'd love to hear if anyone is running it successfully before sinking the time into it... :p

Would love to hear some DH + GForge success stories... :)