A few questions

Needless to say my current host has been less than pleasing, so I've been looking around at a few choices. Of all the ones I have checked out, I am starting to lean most heavily toward DH, so I thought I'd ask a few questions.

How fast is the change-over for domain names (my current domain is in my name)?

How connected do you feel to the staff at DH (that's my biggest complaint with my current provider, they make no attempt at communication... even when it comes time to renew!)?

Do you have any complaints, other thoughts, or recomendations for the move?

Thanks!

If you're just updating the DNS to point at DreamHost's servers it's normally a matter of approx. 24 hours (up to 48 hours).

If you're changing registrar (moving your domain over to DreamHost) it usually takes 5-6 days.


DreamHost are generally very communicative:
* monthly newsletter with important info
* wiki with instructions and FAQs
* blog with less important info, background stories and off-topic stuff
* announcement page (in the Control Panel, but you can subscribe via email)
* the newly updated status page with outage and upgrade info


Best of luck with the move...

In reply to:

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Do you have any complaints, other thoughts, or recomendations for the move?

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The most important thing when choosing a host is to make sure it is appropriate for the type of site or sites you need provision for. If you have a very high traffic site, or a resource intensive site, or a site that you would consider to be "mission critical" (where downtime for web or email services is a very bad thing), then DreamHost is probably not for you.

If you have a "personal site", or perhaps are operating a small business, DreamHost is probably a perfect match. With a single account, I now run 20 domains of which half are small businesses and two are relatively high traffic blogs. I am perfectly happy with the service, and it matches my needs exactly. I have received no complaints from any of my clients and I've been here for about 2 years.

I have found the support team to be extremely helpful and very responsive, and I don't lament the lack of phone support. I have found the assistance of other customers (particularly in this forum) to be a wonderful resource. I really like the quirkiness of DreamHost, with its unique (and highly specificied) Control Panel, and jokey newsletters.

What scjessy said! That is a fair and resoned evaluation. I have beem hosting sites with DH now since 1998 and have watched them grow and improve. There are occasionally glitches, but IMHO, there is *no better value* if your sites can be adequately served living on *anyone's* shared served.
--rlparker

In reply to:

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The most important thing when choosing a host is to make sure it is appropriate for the type of site or sites you need provision for. If you have a very high traffic site, or a resource intensive site, or a site that you would consider to be "mission critical" (where downtime for web or email services is a very bad thing), then DreamHost is probably not for you.

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That's interesting... I have a mission-critical site (no pun intended, it's an evangelism site - missions - hahaha). We have a large international discussion forum - downtime is something I simply *cannot* have.

This is why I want to change servers. My current host backs up nightly at midnight eastern, which causes our west-coast users to be greatly inconvenienced - this is 9-10pm for them... primetime! We've lost traffic since being with this host. :( Then between 4-7am, the server bogs down - and they cannot tell me why. This affects US early-birds like myself and all of our Australian/NZ/Asian users.

So - I cannot have "routine" downtime with the site or email. Need resources. Need to be able to reach someone in case of trouble. If a server fritzes (and sure they will do so) I need it fixed or re-routed to another server pretty quick.

I've been talking with someone from DH for a couple of weeks now, explaining this mission-critical stuff - he's indicated that they can handle it. Is what I'm looking for too much for DH?

Thanks for your input :) I've just got to make sure we don't make a mistake a second time.

[quote]I have a mission-critical site (no pun intended, it's an evangelism site - missions - hahaha)[/quote
LOL that's funny.

well, I can tell you that there arn't routine downtimes on the servers here. Backups are made on a regular basis, (you can access the .snapshot directory for a backup one or two hours old, one or two days old, and one or two weeks old). There's no lag when backups are made becuase of the network structure Dreamhost Uses. You data isn't actually stored in the same physical box that is your web server. Dito for Databases and E-mail services.

However, the problem you may encounter is when a server does fritz out. Most of the time DH is very good about getting things reslved quickly, but from time to time services will go out for a couple of hours. I personaly have only expirenced major down time like this when the lights went out in LA, but that's not the case for everyone.

So, if you can live with your server going out for for 2 or 3 hours once a year (making WILD guesses here) then DH will be just great for you. If one such outage is going to send you looking for an other host, you should be looking for dedicated hosting.

Hope that helps



-Matttail