Test without domain

#1

Hello, a friend of mine just registered an account with dreamhost (I will call it “our account”). No domain hosted with her (our) account yet. Now, we want to build the site (using wordpress), test it and then change the DNS. I checked several posts here in forum including wiki: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/DNS_-_Viewing_site_before_DNS_change. However, these posts doesn’t seem to answer my problem or I am missing something. The wiki article assumes there is a domain registered with the account already, right? The domain we wish to host with this account is already hosted in dreamhost - but different account, different user (FYI, domain is registered by my friend). The domain is hosted on her friend’s account and they agreed that she will host this domain herself now. Well, I tried to add the domain from web panel, I got error: “domain is already registered in dreamhost”.

What should I do? Basically I want to do two things: host the domain with our account and test it before DNS change. Can you please help? Although I am not new to web I have no experience with dreamhost.

I hope I was clear with the description of our problem, English is not my native language. Any help would be really appreciated.

MANY THANKS!
Patrik

#2

You’ll need to inform Support in order to migrate the domain name from one user account to another. That could be sticky, as the rules are that if both accounts used a promocode during substantiation then domains won’t be transferred. Having said that, they’re a very reasonable bunch and if you explain the situation carefully they might allow it in this case.

In the immediate interim, you can host a free [anyname].dreamhosters.com sub-domain as Fully Hosted in the new account and use that to start developing the website.

Your English is awesome, by the way.

#3

you can create a free somenamehere.dreamhosters.com sub domain, you could set wordpress up there and get the site looking like you wanted.

As far as how to proceed it depends? was the domain recently registered? if so I believe you have to wait 60 days before you can transfer ownership. On the other hand if you have good reasons support might be able to help you get the domain moved to the correct account as well. Where to go for that part takes too much to explain all options until we know more about why the domain is being moved from one dreamhost account to the other and how old the domain is.

In almost any case for this, support is going to have to be involved, open a ticket and ask them how to proceed with the switching the domain between accounts.

#4

Thank you for your help. The domain was not registered recently so I hope there will be no need to wait 60 days.

Anyway, I will create the subdomain as you suggested and contact support and ask them to move domain from one user account to another. Thank you both for such a fast reply! I really appreciate it.

Patrik

#5

Hey Patrik! If you’d like to let me know your ticket tracking number, I can check on the status of your email and see if we can figure this out for you quickly :slight_smile: