WordPress and Dreamhost

As has been reported many places, and sent to me in a dozen emails, Dreamhost have integrated support for installing and upgrading WordPress through their administration interface. For many this is not new, some systems like Fantastico have had support for auto-installing WP for a while now, but the interface was cluttered and WordPress was just one of several dozen miscellaneous scripts. What’s really interesting about this decision is their thought process, quoted from their newsletter:

Why didn’t we make it so you could just install Movable Type itself with one click instead? Somewhat because Movable Type is a commercial product, and they would require us to do some sort of weird registration for all our users with them in order to even install the free version. Also, WordPress doesn’t require “rebuilding” your blog every time you publish. Mostly though, installing WordPress was eleven times easier for us.

Tyler Brekko sent me screenshots from the entire installation process, including emails from the “Happy DreamHost WordPress Robot” and it’s kinda neat. They take advantage of a few structural decisions in WordPress and on wordpress.org to make the process very smooth. You can read a bit in their knowledge base. What surprised me the most was the sheer number of people who emailed me about this, DreamHost must have a ton of users. Here are some other posts around the web about this:

Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this!

20 thoughts on “WordPress and Dreamhost

  1. DreamHost absolutely excels as a web hosting company. I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with them support wise and service wise. Plus hosting a WordPress blog on their site is as easy as it gets to do it by hand or using their new tool. No funky configurations, it just plain works.

  2. Jeremy, I do believe you missed the point in it being something done customly, and Fantastico being crowded and having dozens of scripts. Many hosts have Fantastico, but one being done by hand is a different story.

  3. Fantastico also doesn’t install the latest version on some (many?) hosts.

    The thing that is starting to break through is something I’ve known for a while:

    WordPress makes publishing content easy, and that is what all real websites are about: content.

    Ooo.. re-reading that it came out quite well.

  4. I use dreamhost… because they had some crazy plan going on which had it for $10 for a yr for their basic hosting? 800mb. Now if that’s not a crazy deal. I don’t know what is.

    And they have been a good host too.

  5. I’ve been using dreamhost for years…talk about bang for your buck. The longer you’re there, the more services you get for less because they always include current customers in new promotions and they have referral bonuses. I can’t say enough good things about them and it absolutely no suprise that they’ve pioneered in this area as well! Can you host multiple domains on one account (that is, one monthly fee no extra charge) a sick amount of POP accounts, limitless MySql databases, and total control over everything you can manage all accessible through a super well developed admin interface??? OMG!! (btw, if you sign up you could always refer me – mahalie – but regardless…get your arse over there!!) http://www.dreamhost.com

  6. I have used Fantastico and my experience is that they eventually update to the latest version of WordPress. However, I’ll be paying attention to Dreamhost. Thanks for the tip.

  7. Wow, I have considered Dreamhost quite a bit but I’ve seen other hosts that offer cPanel (I don’t know if Dreamhost offers cPanel or not) and I know that it is not a must but I’m quite fond of it and just can’t use another control panel. (But I’m sure if I use it for a while, I will get used to it)

    But wow, addon domains included (3 in the first shared plan)? Had I know of it a tad bit eariler, I’m sure I would have looked at it more 🙂

  8. matt, but i have a question on my mind…u got money for this ? or not? Just for the glory i suppose!
    It’s very great the same…wordpress will gain a great resonance around the web in this way!

    I’m a very proud user!!! 😉

  9. I installed WP via a fantistico installer from my host. Unforturnately, it was version 1.2, so I would up having to upgrade ‘manually’ to 1.2.1 after I read the potential security threat via the WordPress web site.

    It is a great option to have an autoinstaller, for both technical and nontechnical folks.

  10. I was wondering if their referral program works, cuz I’m thinking I must’ve at least referred one or two clients there and my balance stays zero forever.. or maybe I haven’t yet?! 😛

  11. I’m one of the ones who emailed you, Matt 🙂

    I switched to Dreamhost from Media Temple. Although MT is fantastic, it’s expensive. At DreamHost you get a TON of space and many many options (more databases, multiple domains, etc). The WordPress addition makes their hosting even more feature packed.

    DreamHost is also good about implementing suggestions from users. They respond to requests very quickly, and are very nice.

    Teja – DreamHost has an SSL page where you manage your account. Works just as well as Cpanel, just not as pretty 😉

    Sorry if this sounds like a commercial. I’ve just had a lot of bad hosting experiences.

  12. Dreamhost has a ton of features, but they are SLOW! 75% of the time, it takes the main page on my blog over 10 seconds to load up from here in Boston. I’m in the process of moving everything to A Small Orange.

    I just couldn’t take the slowdown.

  13. I also found the thought process interesting, although mainly because MT’s dynamic publishing let’s you eliminate rebuilds entirely if you want and I have no idea what “weird” registration process they are talking about. TypeKey? Not required. Purchase? Perhaps, unless they buy a site license.

    In any case, having blogging software installed via one-click is super nice and indicates that we’re moving away from the days when hosting providers considered such things abberant.

  14. True about dynamic publishing, Jay. I read someone raving about that feature just yesterday. My assumption was that they wanted to do some sort of MT auto-install but ran into license restrictions, not that they were making a qualitative statement about MT itself.

  15. I just found this thread today. Too bad, because I signed up for a media temple account a few weeks ago. My current host is bloghosts and as you may have heard, they’re folding. But I’m finding it pretty hard to move my wordpress blog from bloghosts over to media temple, especially because they do not support wordpress. does anybody know of a good resource that might explain how to go about this? Thanks.

  16. Several of my clients (and a couple of friends too) have chosen Dreamhost to host their WordPress-based sites, only to have their hosting accounts suspended for various reasons as soon as the websites started getting some traffic. It has happened to me as well, and because of of that I will never again recommend anyone to use a classic shared hosting account on hosts like Dreamhost.

    It may of course work perfectly for most small sites, but if your site gets popular you will end up having problems pretty soon.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS