Many wordpress hosting provide a cPanel to control and install the features required for your site. It provides easy access to softaculous scripts, ssl certificates, email creation and many others. It was the standard practice for many of the hosting companies.

But for security reasons and easy way to communicate with your site, some hosting providers give a custom control panel. DreamHost is one such hosting company which provides an intuitive and understanding way to access files, database and email.

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DreamHost review of Control Panel – Dashboard

In this dreamhost review of shared hosting plans, we are going to see the details of the control panel.

How to Access DreamHost control panel?

Login details given after purchase of the dreamhosting plan. You can also set and change the password if required. You can either search for the url or enter directly in your browser address bar.

Once you login, you can see the dashboard with all the options available under your plan. For a VPS hosting, the interface may be different.

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DreamHost Control Panel – Shared Hosting

The following are the main features of the panel.

  1. Home
  2. Websites
  3. Domains
  4. WordPress
  5. Mail
  6. Billing & Account
  7. Support
  8. More

You also add different products from the dashboard.

Websites

In this category you have the following options. This item gives all the options to manage your site files, db, ssl etc.

Manage websites – All the websites added to your account are visible here. You can manage each site here. Registration, Hosting plan, PHP version, SSL, Dream Shield, Email, DNS records etc can be seen here.

FTP Users & Files – The web based FTP client of DreamHost is visible here. You can create user profiles to manage with third-party FTP tools. Manage files related to each site. It acts as a file manager instead of the regular FileZilla etc kind of tools.

MySQL Databases – Create a new MySQL database. See the list of databases on your server and their phpmyadmin details. Database user and its related site can be seen here.

Secure Certificates – Install free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates and renew them if necessary.

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Domains

This option gives different settings to add, register domains and install WordPress.

Manage Domains – In this section, you can manage the web directory of the site, users, files, paths, web options like php version, redirect domain to another url, mirror site, park domains and see DNS records.

Registrations – You can register and search for new domains and TLDs.

Reg. Transfer – You can transfer domains from other domain registrars to DreamHost.

One-Click InstallsInstall WordPress on different domains and manage those apps from here.

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WordPress

One-Click Installs – it is the same as the previous option.

Manage WordPress – Upgrade to DreamPress and other plans from here.

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Mail

All email related settings can be managed here.

Manage Email – See all the email addresses related to your domains. Forwarding and editing details.

Web Mail – Change webmail location and disable webmail if required.

Custom MX – DreamHost MX records are mentioned for your custom domain email management.

Announce Lists – Create an email list and change other settings related to subscribe and unsubscribe.

Anti-Spam – Enable spam filters for each of your domains.

Discussion Lists – Create a discussion list with owner email and password.

Message Filters – You can create special filters to your email account and see the number of filters created.

Auto Responders – It will create autoresponder messages when you are on leave or automatically reply to a customer.

manage email dreamhost review shared hosting plan
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Billing & Account

Manage Account – Account info and active plans are mentioned here. create a backup of your account, if necessary.

Manage Payments – Add payment methods like credit cards, paypal, etc. Add money to your account.

View Invoices – Download your invoices and see the amount of credit left over.

Privacy Settings – Contact info and communication preferences can be seen here.

Security – Change password and enable 2FA authentication to your account.

manage billing account dreamhost control panel review
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Support

Knowledge Base – It will give all the documentation of different products and services it is offering.

Data Centers – The server locations of your hosting plan are mentioned here. It could be US – West (Hillsboro, Oregon) or any other place.

Contact Support – It is where you can chat with the billing, sales, technical support team. You can also create tickets regarding different issues of your wordpress sites and installation.

Support History – Browse all the history of support tickets and chat conversations.

System Status – It will tell you if all the services and servers are operational. In addition you can see the status of phpmyadmin, email, domain registration etc.

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More

SSH Keys – The SSH key fingerprints listed here. You can check whether you are communicating with the right DreamHost servers or not. Also, used to open shells for file access.

Cron Jobs – You can add new cron jobs and edit the existing ones.

Htaccess/WebDAV – You can set up new directories as WebDAV. It makes it easy for collaboration with the team on the remote server.

Block Spiders – You can block Google, Bing, Majestic and Yandex spiders to stop crawling your site. Block directories and files with specific extensions from spiders. If required, block all spiders.

Proxy – It is only for DreamHost VPS Server where you can use proxy IPs.

Site Statistics – You can create a website traffic statistics reports based on weekly, day and longterm. It can work as an alternative for GA or any other. It protects site data and prevent Google from seeing your site statistics.

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Conclusion

In the end, DreamHost review of the control panel shows the interesting feature available in the shared hosting plan. WordPress users accustomed to the regular cPanel would find it a little difficult navigating through all the options available here.

To know more about this webhosting, you can check my DreamHost review.

But once used to the settings of websites and domains, it becomes easy to access your files, wp-install and databases. One of the main features is the file manager which eliminates the necessity of third-party tools.

In addition you can check your email on the web interface itself. If required, you can purchase the domains necessary to install wordpres sites. You can forward emails and redirect sites.

If you feel DreamHost control panel is easy to work with, you can try their shared hosting plan.

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