MetaChat - Dreamhost

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08 January 2007

Dreamhost I am thinking about changing my domain hosting to Dreamhost, for a very basic static site that is small and rarely changes. Anyone here use them?

post by: matildaben at: 11:31 | 17 comments

I used to back when I owned a domain. I've got no complaints.

posted by jonmc 08 January | 11:33

Why Dreamhost, if I may ask?

Also, are stats important to you? Because Dreamhost's stats package sucks. Hard. If your referrers are important to you, you'd be better off somewhere else. (And don't even get me started on their frustrating customer service.)

posted by me3dia 08 January | 11:33

I use them for my hosting. Occasional slight hiccups over the last year, but no notable complaints. I'm please enough.

My domain registrar has always been joker.com—they're crazy German folk but they've always done me right. Suffered a nasty DDoS a while back, but I ported my nameservice over to a third party in the meantime and they resolved it pretty quickly.

If it's really a small site, me3dia's warning about the stats package may be overzealous. Dreamhost uses analog, which isn't stunning but has done the job well enough for my own small-scale endeavors. And you can always run your own stats package.

posted by cortex 08 January | 11:38

No interest in stats. It's just where my resume lives, and I look at it about once a year just to make sure it's still there.

posted by matildaben 08 January | 11:44

If that's literally it—a resume at mattybenster.com or whatever—you could probably bum some let-me-borrow-this-toothpick-indefinitely scale hosting off someone else and just dish for the domain name, whatsoever it may be. Dreamhost (and friends) are cheap, but it sounds like you don't even need $8/mo worth.

posted by cortex 08 January | 11:47

I use them and like them. The stats package has been useful to me, but it's probably that I just don't know what I'm missing.

I have a page that refreshes itself automatically every few minutes (as a backup to a cronjob). Since I switched to DreamHost, I sometimes get (http)500 errors on that page that I never got using the same code on a different host. That's my only complaint, and I am probably doing something I shouldn't be.

posted by danostuporstar 08 January | 11:56

dreamhost is great if you're looking for insane amounts of storage and bandwidth for very little money. if all you're doing is hosting a site that may never exceed, say, 1 megabyte worth of storage, you could probably do better than $8/mo.

posted by syntax 08 January | 12:01

I like them just fine.

posted by Divine_Wino 08 January | 12:05

I'm fine with them. As mentioned, they've had a few hiccups in the past year, but the downtimes are always very brief.

posted by grabbingsand 08 January | 12:12

OK, who should I use?

My requirements are:
- parking for resume
- maybe some static photography gallery sometime
- email address
- whois privacy
- good uptime
- support if i need it
- less than $8 a month

posted by matildaben 08 January | 12:33

I checked a few AskMe threads and it sounds like A Small Orange might be what I need. It's $2 a month.

posted by matildaben 08 January | 12:55

I used Small Packages for a few years and rarely had any down time. Shelagh, the owner, is very quick to help.

posted by deborah 08 January | 13:56

1 and 1 have packages from $1.50 a month. They're a behemoth but I quite like them.

posted by seanyboy 08 January | 16:12

Also, if you're happy to sell your soul, Microsoft offer domain name, web page and email for Free.

posted by seanyboy 08 January | 16:17

The wonderchicken approves of dreamhost.

posted by dg 08 January | 19:03

Dreamhost will wendell.

But yes, if you have minimal needs, there are good hosts with cheaper/smaller packages. Who they are, I have no clue, because I do NOT have minimal needs. I'm wary of 1&1 due to some bogus billing they did to me when I was on their hyper-promotional 3-years-free offer, and they are bad guys in the Spocko vs. Disney free speech battle.

posted by wendell 09 January | 05:24

I host some sites with vkool and I lurve them. I was a refugee from giant corporations so I really, really appreciate dealing with humans again.

posted by loiseau 09 January | 10:10

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