Dreamhost SSH Secure Shell
Dreamhost allows SSH access and it is available to all customers, but first needs to be enabled on your account before you can use it. Enablling SSH access on dreamhost is easy and consist of creating FTP/SSH/SFTP user and granting permissions. A tutorial is available at the following web address: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Enabling_Shell_Access.
SSH
SSH is a powerful feature and a tool which allow you to have secure and encrypted access to your server or host. With SSH you can copy files, access CVS (concurrent version system), cron jobs, setup file permissions, list files and many other tasks. Dreamhost uses OpenSSH as a SSH server which is free and open-source tool, currently the best on the market. After you enable SSH on your account (there is 20 minute delay) you need to install a SSH client to be able to connect to the server. Good client for Windows is Putty, for linux is ssh (openssh) and for Mac OS X is built in. After you connect to the server you can unzip/zip files, modify files, create new directories and access other dreamhost services.