I love Dreamhost. I use Dreamhost for just about anything I put on the mighty internet. Dreamhost has the best control panel of any hosting company, allows me to become a little hosting company of my own by giving my clients discrete shell accounts with access to all of their sites, and gives me unlimited storage (which I’ve tested with a facebook app which I hosted on Dreamhost that created tens of gigabytes of images). I can even build my own php, ruby, python, etc. I have one, and just one beef with Dreamhost, and it’s a pretty big one.

Dreamhost’s shared MySQL servers are SLOOWWWWW!!!1^H

This problem is most apparent with Drupal sites. If Drupal is anything, it’s hard on the database. Drupal makes more queries than a baby-boomer changing email clients. I consider it a flaw of Drupal’s, but sest lah vye. If you install Drupal 7 Core on the Dreamhost Happy Hosting service, the first page load takes 5-10 seconds, and navigating the dashboard is unbearable. The point is, other hosting companies don’t have this problem. Other hosting companies, for whatever reason (mysql servers running on the same machine as the web-server, butt-loads of hardware, better caching configuration), can run Drupal quickly on a basic plan.

I am writing this blog post with a tear trickling down my nose because I really do love Dreamhost. But I need to be honest with myself and admit Dreamhost’s failing. I hope Mr Dreamhost notices this post when he vainly searches the Google for himself and changes his ways. I hope Dreamhost upgrades their MySQL servers!