DreamPress FAQs

This knowledge base offers several articles explaining how to use DreamPress. View the DreamPress category for a list of articles.

A new DreamPress installation should finish within thirty minutes or less. The following items may delay an installation:

• if you are moving from an existing DreamHost WordPress install that has a lot of data that needs to be moved.
• if you're moving an existing site without a DreamHost plan that has a significant amount of data.

Feel free to contact support for an update any time.

At this time, DreamHost has not banned customers from using any specific plugins. That said, there are some plugins that DreamHost does not recommend you use with DreamPress as they're not the best fit. In general, if a plugin uses PHP Sessions, it's not going to perform well with the built-in server cache and, thus, DreamPress.

• Bad Behavior — The way it sets cookies isn't 100% compatible with the DreamPress cache and can cause caching not to set.
• Captcha plugins — These generally apply cookies and/or sessions in a way that tells the DreamPress cache not to cache. Try not to use them on comment pages.

Yes. You can create a temporary dream.press domain to create your site on. Then when you're ready, Technical Support can switch it over to your actual domain name.

DreamHost recommends you only send emails from your WordPress site via an authenticated SMTP account to ensure reliable email delivery from your website. This includes SMTP accounts created at DreamHost or from a third-party email provider.

If your site is hosted on DreamPress, it only supports the WordPress installation and you cannot use any scripts or custom code to send outgoing emails (such as PHP mail() or PHPMailer).

DreamHost suggests using a plugin such as WP Mail SMTP when configuring an SMTP account in order to send outgoing emails. This way, you ensure the emails are authenticated via SPF and DKIM, which helps you prevent spam classification.

See the following article that explains how to install and configure a plugin such as WP Mail SMTP:

• Configuring the 'WP Mail SMTP' plugin

The DreamPress service is only available and optimized for a single WordPress site. You can customize this single WordPress site however you like.

Only a single installation of WordPress is supported with DreamPress. No other applications are allowed. If you require other applications to be run under the same URL, a standard VPS plan is a better fit.

DreamPress offers three different plans depending on your hosting needs. These plans allow you to host a single site, and you can purchase and mix-and-match additional DreamPress plans for each additional WordPress site you wish to host on DreamPress. View the following article for further details on the different hosting options:

• DreamPress plans and pricing

Not at this time.

Yes. Email service is available on DreamPress-only accounts.

The primary difference is the servers DreamPress is hosted on. With DreamPress, all WordPress sites are hosted on DreamCompute, DreamHost's cloud service.

In addition, WordPress is automatically installed on every instance of DreamPress. On a Shared Hosting plan, WordPress can be installed through the DreamHost WordPress install feature located in the DreamHost control panel.

No, there are three. View the DreamPress plans and pricing article for further details.

It depends on what you would like to do with your website. Here are a few comparisons between a VPS plan and DreamPress:

Number of sites — On a VPS server, you can create as many WordPress installs as you like since you only pay for the server space. On a DreamPress server, you can only run a single site. You can add additional sites on DreamPress, but you pay for each new DreamPress site you add. Please keep in mind that you can have several sites on a DreamHost VPS while also having select sites on DreamPress, mixing and matching plans to fit your needs.

Multisite — Multisite is not supported on DreamPress.

Custom/Un-managed sites — DreamPress is a fully managed service which means it's easier for beginners and those that just want to focus on the website without worrying about the server at all. However, some websites are more specialized and require a dedicated tech person to make sure the server is running correctly. If your site is very customized, you may find a VPS is a better fit for your specific setup.

By default, DreamPress users are created as SFTP users so support for cronjobs is not immediately available. See the following article for further instructions on how to change the user type:

• Creating a user with Shell (SSH) access

IonCube Loader is not supported with DreamPress. IonCube's website states the following:

Since the WordPress software is open source, there is never a reason to use IonCube Loader to hide your code.

If you absolutely require IonCube, the only options are to downgrade to a VPS or Shared Hosting plan.

You can find instructions on how to edit your php.ini in the following article:

• PHP.ini

No. Only on a Dedicated plan is root/sudo access available.

All DreamPress sites come configured with a free 'Let's Encrypt' SSL certificate. It's installed along with DreamPress so you do not need to configure it manually.

Yes, but be careful. WordPress doesn't always play well with that, and the DreamPress cache won't know to flush the cache for that folder if it's not powered by WordPress. You may have to manually flush the cache for that folder any time you update its contents.

Yes. You can use a secure connection on your site if you choose to. Bear in mind, while DreamHost caches all safe HTTPS requests, it still won't be quite as fast as a non-HTTPS site.

Yes! DreamPress servers come with HTTP/2 by default for SSL/TLS. It's included on all HTTPS sites (loaded automatically for all new users by default, all existing users with HTTPS, and all existing users who add HTTPS to their DreamPress domain.

DreamHost does not limit the number of visitors to your site or have any overages for traffic. Many customers asked for a direct comparison of competitor offerings, so DreamHost took a look at the performance of DreamPress using loader.io, an independent benchmarking tool. This estimate is based on 50-100 un-cached visitors per minute (averaging 3 page views each) on a basic WordPress install filled with content. Under most circumstances, your site will be able to sustain significantly higher traffic levels due to DreamPress's multi-level caching systems.

Your DreamPress install includes the Proxy Cache Purge plugin, which was written by DreamHost WordPress developers. When active, the plugin automatically detects changes to your post content (such as an edit, a new post, or a comment on a post) and then flushes the appropriate cache for you. The plugin runs on its own and requires no configuration for the majority of its users.

When editing pages in WordPress, you may notice a lag between the time you save a change and the time it appears live. Or, if you edit content outside of WordPress, such as uploading media via SFTP or editing CSS directly, you may not immediately see these changes. The built-in server cache allows you to fix this by giving you the ability to manually purge your cache at any time.

To manually purge your cache, click the Purge Cache link within the Cache drop-down menu, located in the WP-Admin toolbar at the top:

The Proxy Cache Purge plugin offers an option in your WP-Admin panel that checks page URLs on your site to make sure they are caching successfully. If a page on your site is not caching, the 'Check Caching' option tells you the items you can check that may resolve this issue.

To access this option, navigate to the 'Proxy Cache > Check Caching' menu in the left pane of your WP-Admin dashboard. For more information about using these features with the DreamPress Cache, see the following article:

• Managing the DreamPress cache

Yes, but DreamHost does not provide support for them. It's possible to set up W3 Total Cache, for example, to use the DreamPress cache. You may need to enter your built-in server cache IP address. To find this IP address, view the following article:

• Viewing your DreamHost DNS records

The IP Address entry for www is your built-in server cache. For example:

www A 208.97.157.172