A decade on

I’ve been hosting my sites with DreamHost for exactly ten years. That makes me feel old (but also happy). By the time I’m thirty (!!) they’ll have been my web host for half my life, which is even scarier.

I signed up to DreamHost when I was fifteen. They weren’t my first web host, but they were a huge improvement on the previous company I used (who screwed up so badly I lost my first domain permanently). Back in the day, hosting and domain names were expensive, especially in the UK. Hell, no one had heard of Google, social media didn’t exist, and the BBC website didn’t even have any news on it. The internet was a crazy place back then, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it even a tiny bit. Or maybe it’s the hours and hours of carefree time I spent messing around with code and websites for fun that I miss

Side note: I have a policy of only writing about stuff I’m personally interested in here at Blossom and don’t have any sponsored posts of any kind, but I will warn you now that there is a considerable amount of gushing in the following post. I think it’s pretty obvious that I recommend them on a personal level or I wouldn’t have been a customer for the past ten years.

My top three reasons to choose DreamHost are:

1) They are very generous (free back ups, moving popular sites to other servers for me rather than making me pay more, lots of features).
2) They have genuinely amusing newsletters that are legendary.
3) They’re really bloody nice.

Most people would probably say cost should be up there, and it’s true they’re pretty damn cheap for what they offer. Ok, that’s the fourth reason. And obviously support is really good, because they don’t make you feel stupid even when you ask stupid questions. I could list many, many more reasons why they’re awesome but I’m going to stop now because otherwise this entry will get stupidly long.

Fun fact: the first money I ever earned was from DreamHost’s affiliate programme. I bought a green iPod Mini which I still have today (yes, it still works but the battery only lasts a few hours). Since then I’ve used the money to pay for my hosting bill and various other treats. It means my sites pay for themselves, which in turn allows me to blog without feeling guilty.

Over the past decade, DreamHost has been great…I’d be lying if I said they were perfect, but then I’m not perfect either – I’ve asked a fair few stupid questions in my time, and my sites have been hacked Yes, there have been one or two minor problems with webmail downtime along the way, but all hosts have downtime. It’s pure luck what kind of server and neighbours you end up on with any kind of shared web host, which is why people’s experiences vary so wildly.

If you’re thinking about signing up for DreamHost, you can get a free domain name by signing up with the code BLOSSOMDOMAIN, or get $35 off with the code BLOSSOM35. Too lazy to type www.dreamhost.com into your browser? Click here and earn me some pennies.

Or, I can send you a special code for $15 off for a 1-year sign up or $100 off a 2-year sign up. That’s equivalent to around 2 months’ free hosting or a year’s free hosting respectively! If you’re interested, just leave a comment below or drop me an email. These special codes are in super short supply and I’ll only be giving two or three away so get in fast if you want one.

Here’s to the next ten years! Hopefully by that point, I’ll be blogging from my yacht