I have copied across all the articles from Tech-Rant, as I plan on deleting the site. I know Google penalizes duplicate content, but the old site should disappear in a few months. I have FINALLY found a download manger for Wordpress, so the old downloads database can be moved here too. I guess the downloads will work a lot better now they are supported by 25Mbit of bandwidth, instead of whatever could be salvaged from the line at Dreamhost. I’ve kept all my domain names with Dreamhost, they never caused me any problems so I felt like keeping some business with them.

The SpeedForever Trackmania server is also being hosted here; although, that ran fine on my home connection.

Hopefully I will try to post more often, even if I can just schedule some dull posts here and there.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Dreamhost, I've moved to Linode

© jim for 406 Not Acceptable, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dreamhost, linode, trackmania

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I started using Dreamhost in the middle of 2007 and started by Postnuke powered, but now dead, site Tech-Rant. This was back before they launched the single price plan system that they currently use. They had a mixed reputation; however, their hosting experience, user forum, and rather cheery blog brought me round to using them. In my opinion, a host without a forum for their customers is a host to avoid; although, I am sure there are some good ones out there!

I had no problems setting up Postnuke and the webpanel provided by Dreamhost was rather handy with simple administration tasks. I tried using their automatic install and updating Wordpress and Mediawiki installs on other domains. The automatic install feature is good, but restricts users with plugins, so I never stuck to it. I did experience moderate downtime, but overall my sites have been up for around 98 to 99 percent of the time.

For a while I have had one Postnuke site, two Wordpress blogs, and a Mediawiki wiki hosted on the plan across various domains. The sites load fast enough for me and Dreamhost have never complained about about the server load under reasonable use. The one time they did was due to a bug on a Postnuke comment system, which led to the games on Tech-Rant being spammed over nine thousand times each. Hence you can imagine the SQL query for each load of those pages! Still they were reasonable about it and gave me ample time to fix the problem.

I did consider moving to Dreamhost’s Private Server plan; however, I find it rather expensive for what you get. For a new user it costs $25 a month for a private non-database server, with the databases being placed on a shared server. This server only has 150 mhz and 150 MB of memory and based off these specifications I would estimate that the pipe will be shared across somewhere between 50 and 100 users (so 20Mbit to 10Mbit each.) Now a simple Ubuntu Server LAMP install with Apache2, PHP, and MySQL will use around half of this when idle. Add a blog, forum, or your favourite content management system and you can see that the server will be nearing its limitations. Whilst Dreamhost have offered long time customers a discount ($10 off for life in my case,) this still is expensive for a private server; although, it is a semi-managed solution. I did kindly send support a ticket stating that I would be leaving and from their response the cost seems to be an issue for a number of users.

In comparison my nice new host Linode offers me 360MB of memory and the system will only be shared over 40 users (so 25Mbit bandwidth.) Now this is only costing $20 a month, for a superior service; on a host with a better reputation than Dreamhost. So it is easy to see why the Private Server option is rather poor! I already have the LAMP set up and the server is running a Trackmania Server, which has been much better than running it off my broadband (against Sky’s terms!)

I will be sticking with Dreamhost for domain registration as, against my original thoughts, they aren’t that many cheaper registrars… shame really!

I can still honestly recommend Dreamhost to anyone looking for a decent and cheap webhost; just not their private servers!

Related posts:

1. The migration to Linode is complete
2. Google Debuts New Caffeine Search Engine

© jim for 406 Not Acceptable, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dreamhost, hosting, linode, vps, webhost

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Setting up the SSH FTP on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon couldn’t be easier; however, you need to know a small amount on the setup of Unix servers. Otherwise you’ll end up in the root of the filesystem and on the Dreamhost server, for security reasons, you can’t seem to access the ‘home’ directory from root as a normal user. I am sure it won’t take you long to understand why.

Basically all you need to do is go to ‘Places’ then ‘Connect to Server’ in the main menu thingy. From here you can follow this picture:

You need to replace domainname and username with the domain you want to access and the ‘user’ that has access to the domain, not your panel login! Ubuntu will then ask you for the password for this folder, you will have to enter that users password. Once done the folder should open and you will be in your users home folder, there will be a folder for your domain which contains everything accessible from the web.

Setting up Evolution is somewhat more tricky, as their is a little more to do. For the basics you can use the Wizard and follow the guide for either Thunderbird or Outlook, using this picture to help you with the IMAP settings:

Obviously the protocol you want to use is IMAP, your user name will be user@domain.com, and the password will be the password you have set.

That was the ‘easier’ bit, it gets a little more difficult when setting up the SMTP settings.This part stumped me for some time, as I was able to receive emails but I could not them (I had to use the webmail to send email!) I thought that I had set up Firestarter (a firewall client for Linux that is not installed bu default) incorrectly and it was blocking my settings, but no I was just setting Evolution up wrong!

As Dreamhost use a non-standard port for SMTP (the default port is 25, but many ISPs have blocked port 25 to stop spammers.) So if you look at the picture, you can see how I set the port to use the one Dreamhost use. When it comes to the authentication type, just use the ‘check authentication types’ button, if you get an error message here you will not be able to send email as your settings for the SMTP server are incorrect. Remember it should be mail.domain.com just like your IMAP setting, expect you need to add :587 to set the port.

You can also set up the client to use encryption and more secure protocols for sending/recieving emails; however, I think that would be going just a bit to far. For now you should just enjoy the experience of sending and recieving emails through your own mail server (well Dreamhost’s, but with your own cool domain name.)

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Dreamhost, I've moved to Linode
2. Watch Hulu, South Park, One Piece videos using a SSH Tunnel

© jim for 406 Not Acceptable, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dreamhost, evolution, linux, ssh, ubuntu

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