January 30, 2010
PHP is the best web programming language. It was originally created as Personal Homepage Tools but now stands for HyperText Preprocessor. It is powerful, simple to learn and code, have large community of contributors, users and there are many extensions, codes, classes, scripts and web software available, both free and paid. Almost all web hosting providers (if not all) offer PHP Web Hosting services to their clients. This is because php is very popular, and it is used on more than 20 million websites to create their webpages. There are many popular scripts that require PHP: WordPress (a weblog software for creating blogs), Joomla (CMS – content management script), Drupal (also CMS), phpbb (forums, bulletin boards), and all are free and distrubuted under GNU General Public License. Paid scripts like Vbulletin are also very popular and offer many features to users. PHP often comes with MySQL – a Structured Query Language database relational system for storing data. Dreamhost allows the following four PHP configurations: user-installed php running as cgi, php4 running as cgi, php5 running as cgi, and php5 running as an Apache module (only available on dreamhost ps). There is also support for custom php.ini but this is somewhat difficult for you to setup, check this article: http://www.wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/PHP.ini for more info, you need to have proper unix knowledge to setup custom php.ini.
January 19, 2010
WordPress is, according to its creators, state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. It is free weblog(blog) web software licensed under GNU General Public License, which gives you the freedom use, copy, modify and distribute the software. But it is much more than a blogging platform (it is the most popular weblog software), because it have many features it more like Content Management System rather than simple blogging tool. Supports theme system with widgets where you can easily change the look of your web site, and it is very easy to design wordpress theme. If you are not good with designing (like me) there are thousands of free and professional templates available on the internet. Official wordpress theme directory is available at wordpress.org/extend/themes/ with more than 1000 themes (currently). Lots of new themes are added daily, being tested first before publication. Other feature worth noting here is the extension (plugin) system. It adds new functionality to the software. Also there are many plugins available, check wordpress.org/extend/plugins . Other features supported are: rss feeds of recent posts, user management system (add, edit users) with user registration, static pages, link management, comments, cross-blog communication tools, standards compliance and much much more. Download it from wordpress.org the official website.
DreamHost WordPress Review
This website is hosted by dreamhost and built with wordpress. It runs fast and all wordpress features are available. Fantastico is not offered, but one-click installation is available with their own one-click installer, which I used it to create this blog. Happy blogging!
January 6, 2010
Dreamhost offers several web hosting plans with lots of features.
Shared Hosting
Great for bloggers and personal sites. There is only one shared hosting plan available with the following features: unlimited storage, bandwidth, host unlimited domains/subdomains on one account, unlimited mysql databases, e-mail accounts, php, perl, python support, ruby on rails, ssl (secure socket layer – https) and much more – check all features here: http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-features.html
VPS hosting
Vps stands for Virtual Private Server. These servers exist virtually (actually it is software manipulation) in physical servers. These type of hosting is suitable for mid-size sites with occasional bursts in traffic. There are two vps plans available: Dreamhost PS and DreamHost PS MySQL. PS is available as one-click addon to your shared hosting account. PS MySQL is Virtual privata server designed for high performance mysql databases. Every feature from shared hosting plans is available inluding the unlimited space and bandwidth. Plans start from $15/month/150mb RAM up to $400 a month with 4 Gigabytes of RAM. You get protected CPU and memory, full root access and more.
Dedicated Server hosting
Dedicated hosting is actually a physical server located in data-center leased for monthly fee and not shared with other customers. This type of hosting is best for large traffic websites or web services that require dedicated memory, cpu, space and/or bandwidth and net traffic. After acquiring large equity stake in Alchemy Communications, Inc dreamhost started offering dedicated servers.
Colocation hosting
This type of hosting allows users to lease space and place their own servers in web hosting data-centers where internet connectivity is provided by the data-center. Dreamhost is offering this type of hosting via Alchemy Communications, Inc. The servers are secured with 3 megawatts UPS (Uninterpretable Power Supply), redundant fire suppression, cooling systems etc.