Hosting multiple outside domains from a single account

#1

I want to manage a hosting account in a way that seemed straightforward at first, but now I’m not so sure that it is.

I pay for hosting on DH and have a couple of personal websites. I have a few friends who would like to have personal websites too. Since I am already paying for hosting, my plan was to have my friends register domain names (probably with DH, but possibly elsewhere too) and to host those domain names through my account. I don’t want to transfer the ownership of their domain names, and I don’t want to pay to register their domain names through my account. Is this possible? How would I go about doing that?

I know that I can add them as users to my hosting account with limited account privileges, and I think I would need to do this so that they can properly manage their sites. But if they register a domain through DH, can I still add them as users to my hosting account?

I’ve spent a few hours trying to figure out how to do this on my own, but am making very little progress…

#2

If you want them to register and pay for the domains themselves and just host them on your account it’s simplest if they use a different domain registrar. namecheap, godaddy anyone. Don’t buy hosting, just register the names that way. Then you point the names servers on those domains to
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

Then on your dreamhost account you just go to manage domains, and add the domain or sub-domain, just as you would if it was a registration on your account.

Dreamhost system really isn’t set up for domain registration on one dreamhost account and host that domain in a different dreamhost account.

I had my brothers domain registered on my account at one point, and I just set up a “donations” page on a sub-domain and whenever I need to renew it I had him go make a donation of 9.95 and then after the credit showed up I would renew which canceled out the credit. If your friends are the type that would promptly make donations that sort of thing works.

#3

Thanks LakeRat, this is exactly what I was wondering. My initial thought was that it would be easier to keep everything under one roof, but I guess that’s not true in this case. Another registrar it is then… I like my friends, but I don’t want to have to remember to hit them up for $9.95 once a year.