Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dreamhost

Which host offers the most interpreters?

grumblebee — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:20:19 -0800

Is there a reliable, not-too-expensive hosting company out there that lets you post server scripts in most open-source languages? This is for personal use. I know PHP and I'm learning Python. Eventually, I want to learn Java and one of the popular functional languages. And maybe some C++.

I know I could just download the various interpreters and compilers and play around locally, but it's so much more fun writing web apps for public consumption.

Currently, I'm with Dreamhost, and they let me code in PHP and Python. Is there another host out there with more options?

I know I could get my own dedicated server or use Amazon's cloud service, but those would be expensive solutions -- wouldn't they? If that's the only way to go, help me find the most reasonable option. I'm talking personal website stuff here. I currently pay $30 a month to Dreamhost. I'd pay a bit more than that if necessary, but I'd rather not pay hundreds a month.

They HaX0r3D my PHP!

yellowbkpk — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:34:27 -0800

I discovered that my DreamHost account appears to have been "hacked". What does this PHP code do and what's a good way to get rid of it? When I was playing around with my websites tonight I noticed tons of PHP files that weren't there before. This link is an example of one of the files that I found.

In general, it appears that it takes any file matching *.(php|html|phps), renames it to filename<random alpha in A-Za-z>.php and sticks something similar to the above-linked PHP doc in it.

I notified Dreamhost of the problem, hoping that they could dig through my backups and let me know when these files were created, but I'm not holding my breath.

1. Has anyone seen these before? They're quite hard to search Google for since it's almost completely random data.
2. What does it do? I'm assuming it's some sort of bot net drone code of some sort.
3. It appears to have only created copies of files that are accessible from a Google search. e.g. I have a few "private" web pages that have obscure directory names that only I know. These files were not modified (but are clearly read/writeable with PHP).
4. How do I clean it up nicely? I don't see any modifications to existing files, so I think I can just delete the files that were created. File sizes, names, etc. are all different.

Thanks in advance!
Sorry for the meta-question. I'd be able to narrow it down to one more specific question if I could Google it.

Hey, mp3 bloggers, what do you wish you'd known when you started out?

mds35 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:04:26 -0800

Hey, mp3 bloggers, what do you wish you'd known when you started out? I'm close to launching an mp3 blog. What pitfalls have you encountered? What mistakes have you made along the way? What unexepected successes have you had? What do you wish you'd known before launching?

I'm looking for anecdotal advice of the technical, legal, and monetary varieties.

My blog will focus on obscure-ish music. I'm using WordPress on my own domain, hosted at Dreamhost.

DIY Secure VPN/SSH connection?

BoldStepDesign — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:29:28 -0800

I've been unsuccessful in getting an old pc up and running with Ubuntu or some other *nix OS. I am wondering. Is it possible to use VPN or ssh from my computer to my Dreamhost account to create a secure tunnel to their servers into to the internet? I'm using 0.00 gb on my account for bandwidth. Sound doable? Basically:

Me @ coffeeshop -- secure tunnel -- > Dreamhost -- > Out to the net.

-=--
If not can I do this running a VPS? (Virtual Private server), if so suggest some cheap hosts please.
-+--

Moving from Dreamhost to Lunarpages

IZ — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:44:20 -0800

I Want to move my Wordpress blog from Dreamhost to Lunarpages. Where do I start? Hi all,

I want to move my sites (all Wordpress blogs) from Dreamhost to Lunarpages. Dreamhost is a nice bunch of guys and all, but all the downtime combined would have enabled me to grow a significant beard, if I wanted one. Which I don't, but that's beside the point.

The site I currently host at Lunarpages has had no downtime that I'm aware of and they are really responsive and professional. Therefore I now want to bring all my sites there.

Please help me. These are my requirements:

- I'm not extremely technical (self taught and have no clue about databases etc) and am looking for a step by step approach for dummies.

- If possible I would like to have no or very limited downtime of my sites.

- Additionaly, I would like to have some advice on which plan I should take with Lunarpages. One of my sites has appr. 4k to 7k visitors per day, the rest is very limited.

Thank you so much for your kind help!

Back my Mac up online

c:\awesome — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 10:46:37 -0800

What's the best software for automated online backups for OSX? I have a Dreamhost account with unlimited storage and transfer, and I'd like to use that as a place to remotely backup the data on my Macbook Pro (mostly photos from iPhoto). MobileMe is a ripoff.

You'd think there'd be a nice piece of software that runs in the background and allows me to set a few directories to be synced, and any additions to those folders are automatically reflected online. True? Something that uses SSH or FTP, maybe?

I know about rsync but I'm stupid and I want a GUI.

What are my options?

Dreamhost-hosted PHPBB3 board is slow. Why?

deeper red — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:27:53 -0800

My Dreamhost one-click-install PHPBB3 website is often slow, and sometimes completely inaccessible. What's going on? I've got a Dreamhost account and use it to host several domains. I used one-click-install (the "advanced" option) to install a PHPBB3 board at one domain. The trouble is that it's often slow (pauses of 30 seconds before it responds), and sometimes is completely inaccessible, although other domains I have with Dreamhost work fine, and the site pings OK. I've not personalized, or changed any settings.

What's going on?

Pharma Spam on a web site....

dobbs — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:17:21 -0800

A friend of mine's site is plagued with pharma spam in Google's cache. A friend of mine's site is hosted on Dreamhost and when the site and the code for the site is viewed, there are no problems with it. However, if you search for just about any drug on the planet, his site comes up pretty high in the ranks on Google.

When you follow the link off Google, it makes no sense why his site is appearing. However, if you view the Google cache for the page... tons of pharma spam. This despite no one but the friend having passwords or access to the site and he's running the latest version of his CMS (expression engine) which is, by all accounts we could find, secure. His site also doens't allow trackbacks, comments, or anything else that allows others access of any kind to the cms.

So...

1) How did these spammers do this?
2) How can we ensure they don't do it again?
3) What should we do regarding Google? (ie, alert them? ignore it and hope it's gone the next time the robot comes thru?)
4) I did a bit of searching and found some other people with this problem... they're also on DH, though DH won't own up to it and blames wordpress (which isn't installed and never has been) and the friend not being diligent with his password (he is).

Wordpress/PHP/Dreamhost web hosting question

trystero — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:30:54 -0800

Wordpress/PHP/Dreamhost web hosting question: I run Wordpress 1.5.2 on a particular web page which is hosted with Dreamhost. This web page has been running fine for years and I haven't done anything to change it. However, sometime within the last few weeks, the sidebar started "choking" on a particular line of code: Nothing after this line is processed or appears on the page. If this line of code is removed, everything else appears normally. Help? Here's the code that's causing the problem (I removed the <> from the start and end of the line so that the code would show up):

?php dropdown_cats(true, All, name); ?

I'm assuming Dreamhost made some kind of change recently which caused this problem, but Dreamhost support is denying this. Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Webhosting reviews

mr. creosote — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:43:09 -0800

How do you find good shared web hosting, aside from word-of-mouth? Is there a "Consumer Reports" (or Ars Technica?) of the hosting world? I've found word-of-mouth from a handful of people to not be entirely reliable, so I'm wondering if there are some websites that actively review and rank web hosting providers in terms of uptime and reliability. Barring that, are there any good forums for discussing this topic?

The one forum I'm aware of offhand is WebmasterWorld, but their forum is atomized into a lot of other subjects and overall it's pretty much unsearchable.

Basically I have been on Dreamhost for a couple of years now but it seems like the wheels are starting to fall off. The downtime on mail, mysql, web, and panel is gradually increasing and I'm now seeing problems on a daily basis. I think it's time to pack my bags.

If you want to make recommendations for shared/dedicated hosting, that's fine, but resources and forums dedicated to webhost shopping are preferred.

WP Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine

Baud — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:53:01 -0800

WorpressFilter Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine - help ! I've upgraded my Wordprees blog to the latest version and all hell broke loose on me... First it was a full blatk blog and admin section. I've regained access to the admin section by deleting a theme folder but there is still a white page where somebaudy.com used to be

Deleting the content of the plugins folder did not help.

if it's of any help I'm hosted by DreamHost

I'd like my DB to be full utf-8

Baud — Sat, 12 May 2007 06:42:45 -0800

help me convert a mySQL database to UTF-8. Hive, I'm turning you as my last hope.

ladies and gentlemen, here are the facts

- I have french-speaking, 2.1 wordpress blog, with posts full of the funny frenchy accented letters (é,à,ù, etc.) hosted at dreamhost (not one-click-installed, manually installed)
- charset in the html pages displayed is set as ISO-8859-1. Just switching from ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8 in the admin interface will not solve the problem, only display "?" where there are accented letters.
- I suspect my DB is in fact a mix of ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 (I've moved hosts)
- anyway, I want it to be full and integral UTF-8 (character set and collation connexion)

There are similar complaints to mine in the wordpress support forums but I haven't been able to find a "magic bullet" solution.

Or have I ?

This :

http://sungnyemun.org/code/fixEncodings.py.gz

claims to be just the ticket but I lack the basic python synthax knowledge that are required for this tool. (I have shell access to my dreamhost account)

So... can you please

- tell me if it looks like this script does what's advertised
- show me the shell and python ropes to run that script on a mysql dump (let's say it's called dumpoftheday.sql)

if the script is not the magic bullet, can you please help me find a way to have a nice, shiny and full utf-8 mysql database.

many thanks in advance !

Needing shared hosting that doesn't suck

zek — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:39:04 -0800

I need a recommendation for decent shared hosting (NOT Dreamhost.. see inside). Every Dreamhost site I've set up has had serious latency problems (and I've run 10 of them under 2 accounts). Just last week I set up a new site on Dreamhost, on yet another server I've never seen before, and boom, right off the bat, 4-second latency on all page loads. Dammit! Last summer I tried Verio from a recommendation and it sucked worse, and had downtime to boot.

My basic requirements are 4 GB of storage, about 40 GB a month of bandwidth, PHP, MYSQL, and shell. I'm going to be running MediaWiki with tons of content but it won't be busy at all. I don't mind paying a little extra, say in the $15-25/mo range, but $50 for a dedicated server is too much. A U.S. server is preferred.

Can anyone vouch for shared hosting that doesn't suck? Has anyone moved away from Dreamhost and found better performance?

Document management on a shared hosting server?

sprocket87 — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:43:18 -0800

Help me find an online document management system / digital asset management system. I'm looking for a document management system (DMS) / digital asset management system (DAM) for my scanned documents. I plan to store all of my important documents, from credit card statements to bills to receipts to insurance info, etc, digitally. I'll be using a scanner with ADF & duplexing to digitize my papers. I need a management system to organize and archive them.

Ideally, I'd like to have some software that can be set up on Dreamhost for a hosted solution. However, to allow for more flexible responses, here are my overall stipulations:

1. Must be free or inexpensive. See 2.

2. Must be hosted online. I don't trust local copies (hardware failure/fire/theft/etc). This applies to portable (DVD, etc) media as well. It does NOT need to be a hosted system per se, in that Company X provides the DMS/DAM software and hosts it. I am willing / would prefer to use a 3rd party host, such as Dreamhost, for cost reasons. They are much more flexible in that they offer tons of storage and bandwidth and whatever else you want for a much lower cost. I don't want to pay $X/mo just for an online DAM. I am willing to pay $X/mo for a shared host that allows me to host anything else I want as well though.

3. Must be somewhat easy to install, configure and use, whether it is a provided & hosted service or a service I set up on a shared host.

4. Does not have to control my scanning experience; I can use a separate tool to get the files digitized but I'm looking for the DSM/DAM service to organize them. Obviously an online service wouldn't have much control over my hardware anyway :)

5. Should have the usual DMS/DAM features: File indexing for a wide array of filetypes (doc/pdf/all images/tiff/archives/etc), support OCR if possible, allow categories and advanced naming/file control, exporting, etc.

I love the looks of Linux DMS tools like DocMGR, but the setup looks somewhat overwhelming. I'm comfortable with basic Linux tasks, but configuring a shared host is a bit confusing to me. Is there any way to even set up such services on a shared host? For instance, is it possible to install DocMGR on Dreamhost? I suspect not, as it uses PostgreSQL and Dreamhost uses MySQL. But beyond this limitation, how does one go about installing their own applications on a shared host? I mean, Dreamhost provides a shell prompt, but not root - are you even allowed to install software? And what about dependencies, etc?

I know Dreamhost offers several "One-click" installable services, like MediaWiki, Wordpress, Joomla, etc, but I don't think any of these are exactly what I'm looking for. I'm assuming it's possible to set up some other service, albeit with more work, but I'm not having much success finding documented "How To's" for this. For instance, how to set up docmgr/doxfs/etc on a shared host.

Also, I know there are some basic Windows tools like PaperPort and Docsvault that do a great job of managing local copies of digital files, but I want them online. I understand I could simply backup a directory to an online host, but I'm thinking a hosted database would be preferable for advanced administration, etc.

Obviously I have a lot of "wants" so this is pretty wide open. Understand that I'm not a corporation and don't need any huge DAM solutions, but I'd like something a little more advanced than a basic client-side software.

Good community forum software?

jdroth — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:36:57 -0800

I'm looking for easy-to-manage community forum software. I run a site hosted at Dreamhost, and would like to add a message board for community discussion. I'm not averse to using phpbb (which Dreamhost can auto-install) if it can be made administrator-friendly. (I find the current admin panel a frustrating pile of crap.) In particular, I don't want to have to mess with spam user registrations. Ideally users could register and use the site with ease, while spammers would be blocked with minimal intervention on my part. (Kind of how WordPress/Akismet deals with spam comments.) I rather like the Joel on Software discussion group layout — clean, simple, yet effective. Willing to pay, if needed.

Dynamic Discussion List Footers

Jeff Howard — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:30:18 -0800

I need help creating a dynamic footer for the e-mail messages in a Mailman discussion list. I want to build a stronger connection between the individual e-mail messages and the web archive that is generated and stored on Dreamhost. Each time a message is posted to the list, it also gets assigned a unique id and added to the web archive. Here's our archive.

Mailman can add a static footer to the bottom of each e-mail message. We're currently doing that. What I'd like though is a way to add a link in the footer of every e-mail directly to that thread in the archives. A dynamic footer. This seems to involve knowing the unique ID for the message before the e-mail is forwarded out to the recipients, which isn't trivial. But what's most difficult right now is figuring out how to add any dynamic information at all to the footer of the e-mails in the discussion list.

Can Mailman do this? Are there other discussion list tools that would be better suited to this goal? If it's not feasible to add the unique ID to each e-mail message, then it might also work if I could construct the link with the date and subject of the e-mail. I'm hoping there's a more elegant way to go about it.

Tossing out a lifeboat on the S. S. Dreamhost

shannymara — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:59:15 -0800

Dreamhost alternatives? I've been with Dreamhost for about 2 years and it seems that in recent months the servers have trended towards slow, erratic, or unreliable. I'm also hearing on the grapevine that they've oversold themselves. That's quite believable as my account gets 2.2 TB of bandwidth and 78 GB of disk space, and I'm paying only $20 or so.

What else is out there that's dependable and on a backbone? What do you recommend? Why?

My shopping list is nothing remarkable, but in a nutshell: are basically hosted serving with 30 GB/month of bandwidth (and maybe breathing room), 1 GB of storage, PHP, mysql, and enough resources to run a discussion board with a couple of hundred active users, and servers that are not oversold. As a safety valve I also want a bandwidth throttle too so I'm not on the hook if I'm unlucky enough to get DDOSed... Dreamhost has one.

Is DreamHost always this bad?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:52:14 -0800

Is DreamHost always this bad? Are they going to get better? I've been working with a client's site hosted with DreamHost. The number of outages, network problems and so on has been really quite unimpressive. I read their DreamHost Status page and shake my head. There's a new and quite serious problem every day.

This question addresses the same issue and someone in it says they suffered from DOS attacks. But that's not what's going on now. It's just one random thing after another. Plus, there are outages and failures to connect at my end (on "charm") that never get a mention.

I like DreamHost, their prices are good and their control panel and forums and so on make sense to me. Plus the fact that they're so big and popular means there's a decent community of users. I was considering hosting one of my own projects with them.

But seriously. The service just doesn't seem reliable. Are they going through a bad patch or is it all bad patch with them? Can I expect them to improve?

Can you help me with .htaccess

You Should See the Other Guy — Thu, 25 May 2006 19:32:18 -0800

Help with modifying an .htaccess file. I'm on Dreamhost and using Expression Engine, if that makes any diff. Disclaimer: I know nothing of the .htaccess thingy and have never touched it before. Please explain as if speaking to an idiot!

I use the Expression Engine CMS which defaults to putting index.php in a url, like this:

www.mydomain.com/index.php/template/

According to this page in the EE wiki, I can configure .htaccess to omit the index.php so it looks like this

www.mydomain.com/template/

However, I cannot make head nor tail of the instructions there.

I use Dreamhost as my host and do not see an .htaccess file in the root. They do have .htaccess in their control panel and when I click it it asks me to create a new directory.

Hence, I'm lost.

Any suggestions?

Practical Joomla Advice....

BigBrownBear — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:00:16 -0800

Seeking practical advice on starting with Joomla in Dreamhost. After asking about Dreamhost and reviewing different CMS', I've decided on Dreamhost and Joomla for a webpage I'm creating. I've worked a bit with Textpattern and designed some pages using HTML/CSS/Javascript, but I am still a bit of a beginner - especially with content management systems. I would appreciate any practical advice on how to get started or helpful links. I've read some of the stuff on the Joomla page but would appreciate more tips on getting started and intergrating google ads.

The page won't be very complex - it's just going to include reviews containg video and audio (probably youtube/odeo streaming) and some wayfaring maps. I just need something that's not a blog format.

If anyone really hates Joomla, I'd also like to hear that, although I don't like textpattern and am not too pleased with Drupal either.

The mystery of the double homepage

stormygrey — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 07:35:43 -0800

Why would users be seeing two different home pages? We switched servers (to Dreamhost) on Thursday evening and now some people are seeing the "live" site, while some are seeing a site that is not showing up on Dreamhost but has been updated in house since the transfer, what gives?

If it helps, other sites within the site are showing up correctly and pinging correctly, whereas when you ping our site proper it says it can't find the site. How can I find the IP of the wrong front page without using ping? Please help solve this mystery!

What's the bottom line on dreamhost?

BigBrownBear — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:19:41 -0800

What's the bottom line on dreamhost? I know that there are a number of posts that discuss the pros and cons of various hostings. All these posts say one of two things about dreamhost: (1) they are the best thing to ever happen to the internet (2) they are a pyramid scheme and people are paid to say these things.

I'm planning on making a not for profit site using Drupal with Quicktime videos, so there could be quite a bit of bandwidth and this seems like a great deal. I've had some bad hosting experiences (filefarmer and 1&1) that I don't want to repeat.

Import data into mySQL?

o2b — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 18:14:09 -0800

I need help importing mySQL data from one server to another. I have a 15mb file I exported from the source DB, but I don't know how to get it into the new one. I'm moving to a Dreamhost account, if that helps, and have phpMyAdmin at my disposal. It's certainly not intuitive -- can someone help me out?

Missing Domain

armoured-ant — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:49:03 -0800

Help! My domain has fallen off the internet, my email server is refusing to accept my account details, ditto my FTP, the control panel for my site is there, but no longer logging me in. Worse still, my provider's page now refers striaght to this page. What in the hell has gone wrong? Has my host been hijacked?