DreamHost In-Depth (was Re: Dreamhost?)

[Stephen Barncard]

In all fairness,

I don't why you have so many troubles, but I've never had the 
severity of these problems you report with Dreamhost.

I've used them exclusively for hosting since 2002, and used every 
plan they have on over 15 sites and 10 clients. I could never detect 
any difference in the quality of serving between the dedicated plan 
at $200/mo and my Code monster @$20/mon. Both are/were extremely fast.

As far as upload speed, unless you have a T1 or Frame Relay, you're 
never going to get more than 300k/second UPLOAD from a residence on 
even cable!

You do know that DSL and cable internet are asymmetrical, right? Are 
you not sure some of your problems might be your local ISP? DSL has a 
max 1.2 megaBit/sec download speed and Cable is up to about 6 
megaBits/2.


And the talk about CGIs last week got me feeling experimental - so I 
got a Rev CGI working ("Hello World") in about 10 minutes...I thought 
it was going to be hard or take a while...

http://barncard.com/cgi-bin/hello.cgi

-----script---

#!revolution

on startup
  put "Content-Type: text/plain" & cr & cr
  repeat with n = 1 to 17
           put n && "Hello World!" & return
   end repeat     
end startup

-----script---

  If you need help... I've got a nice package of docs and the right 
engine for you to get it running. You don't need a variety of 
engines, just the right one.

I don't know if you'd be better off 'somewhere else'. It's a jungle 
out there among providers. I know, I've tried many of them. I swear, 
these guys just get it, provide the latest Open Source tools, their 
control panel rocks. and they're funny.

Your problems with support are strange - have you used your phone call yet?

I've always had great email responses within 12 or 13 hours, and they 
are very helpful... so something's not right with your account. You 
should use their web-based interface - I think they see it earlier, 
or can keep track of it better.

perhaps you might give them another chance.


PS. I get no money or favors for this endorsement. However I think 
that companies that really try hard to make a good product should be 
rewarded, so they'll be around when I need them!.


>Update:
>
>- Although people have had success with Rev CGI on DreamHost, I was not able
>to get it to work (using a variety of engines and following the steps that
>I've received in email and from the Use-Rev archive). It seems to be
>dependent on the particular server you're on, whether it will work or not.
>
>- Support has not gotten back to me in less than 36 hrs for the four help
>requests I've made since my earlier post.
>
>- Speed of FTP uploads/downloads never improved, in fact they bogged down
>even more since I made my last post. Uploads got as slow as 300KB/sec.
>
>- Everything DreamHost has been down since around 6:30pm Eastern today. My
>email, my website, even their own home page and control panel. Seems they
>are no more reliable than my previous provider. :( Looks like I'll be going
>back to my prior host, ChiHost.com. (I was able to use Rev CGI on ChiHost,
>no problem.)
>

-- 
stephen barncard
s a n  f r a n c i s c o
- - -  - - - - - - - - -