Hi All,
I’m considering DreamHost, but I’ve got a few pre-purchase questions…
My hosting background: I’m used to operating on a private box with CPanel/WHM and the ability to get my admin to install PHP modules and whatnot whenever I needed. We don’t have super advanced needs, but the flexibility is nice. The hardware is old and my admin no longer has time to maintain the uptime I require, so I’m scouting new hosting.
Questions:
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I plan on hosting a bunch of domains (8+), does this work very well on DreamHost? The “1 FTP” account thing seems a bit strange organization wise for me, I’m used to having essentially a “reseller” WHM panel for creating unique accounts for each of my sites. I see that I can give FTP users access to certain folders, I guess each site gets a folder? How convenient is running lots of websites via DreamHost?
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Can I create custom nameservers? ie. ns1.prontex.ca, ns2.prontex.ca?
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Can I modify the httpd.conf file?
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Can I use “wildcard subdomains” ie. ****.mydomain.com without having to setup each subdomain manually (setting this up in CPanel/WHM required a DNS zone tweak and httpd.conf modification, see: http://webgasm.actiononline.biz/server/?p=84)
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Is the GD library for PHP pre-installed?
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It looks like I have the option to entirely compile my own install of PHP, so this might be a silly question, but can I add modules I choose (like GD if it weren’t installed, or others…)?
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What’s the uptime/reliability REALLY like… I’ve seen some complainers on the forums, but I respect that every once in a while a bad situation happens and you hear about it, so how about on the masses? Are we looking at 95%? 99%? 99.9%?
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Are the servers generally pretty quick, or if I start pulling decent traffic will I lag it up big time?
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What’s some big reasons why DreamHost is better than the competition? Try to give something with a little meat, and skip the boring price discussion… not that I’m on an unlimited budget or anything, but i’d prefer a quality web host over an extremely affordable one.
If I think of anything else, I’ll add it to the end…
Thanks all!