How do I get started?

If you wish to use any DreamHost services, you must create an account. View the following article for instructions on how to open an account.

• How to open a DreamHost account

Once you finish the signup process, you’ll receive a message to notify you that your account is set up. From there, you can log in to the panel at:

• https://panel.dreamhost.com/

To log in, use the credentials within the email that was sent to you.

To load any web page, the owner must first own the registration of the domain name. If you do not own the registration, you have no right to use the domain name.

To register a domain, go to the Registrations page.

DreamHost allows the registration of many different Top Level Domains (TLDs). You can view a full list of these on the Registrations page by clicking the See full pricing link.

For further information, please review the Domain Registration article.

After you purchase a registration, you must then add a hosting plan in order for it to resolve online. There are a few different hosting options you can use for your domain.

• Fully hosted — your site is hosted on a server and is visible online
• Remixer — your site is hosted on the Remixer website builder plan
• WordPress — your site is still Fully Hosted, but it's running the software for WordPress
• DreamPress — your site is Fully Hosted and running WordPress, but it's hosted on the DreamPress plan

To add a hosting plan to your account, go to the Manage Account page.

If you already added a plan, you’ll see it listed here. In this example, a 'Shared' hosting plan has been added for the entire year.

View the following article for instructions on how to add hosting to your domain so it is Fully Hosted.

• How do I add a domain?

If the nameservers are set to DreamHost already, then all you need to do is set up hosting. View the following articles for further information:

DreamHost also offers a custom website builder called 'Remixer' that requires no coding experience. Remixer is a hosting service that is separate from a Fully Hosted plan like Shared, VPS, Dedicated, or DreamPress hosting. With Remixer, you can click to build your site using its online interface. View the following link for further details:

• Remixer help pages

WordPress is the world's most popular content management system (CMS), and DreamHost is one of the very few recommended providers by WordPress.org. If you're new to hosting a website, you'll want to check out WordPress to help you build your website. Within minutes, you can build a site that incorporates all of the modern features that websites now include, with a nearly limitless capacity to add new features as you need them.

To help you get started with building a WordPress site at DreamHost, please see the following articles:

DreamPress is DreamHost's managed WordPress product, which provides even more powerful features such as larger memory & storage plans, faster speeds, and improved caching.

More information on DreamPress can be found here:

• DreamPress

Free migrations using the DreamHost Automated Migration Plugin

You can now migrate your own WordPress site to DreamHost for free, using the DreamHost Automated Migration Plugin. The plugin can be used on any DreamHost account with an active hosting plan. See the following article for more details:

• Using the DreamHost Automated Migration WordPress plugin

Paid option to migrate your site

If you are having trouble migrating your website from another host, or just don't have the time, DreamHost currently offers a service that takes care of that for you. You can find more information in the DreamHost Website migration services article.

After you set up hosting for your domain, it's highly recommended that you also add an SSL certificate to it (either a free 'Let's Encrypt' or professionally-signed certificate). Adding a certificate is a simple process that not only secures your site for transactions and eCommerce, but also ensures that your site is rated as secure. In fact, Google will more favorably rank it since having a secure site is an important factor in search rankings.

To help you get started with adding a certificate, please see the following articles:

The following are additional services or products you can add to your site, but are not mandatory in order for it to operate.

Once you add hosting to a domain, you can then create an email address(es).

To create an email address:

1. Go to the Manage Email page.
2. Click the Create New Email Address button at the top. You’ll then be able to enter a new email and a password.

Once you save the changes, the necessary DNS records for mail are added to your site’s DNS.

More information can be found at Email Setup regarding the creation and configuration of email accounts with DreamHost.

It is also possible to host your email outside of DreamHost. To host elsewhere, you can configure custom MX records to point to your external mail host. Visit the MX record article for further instructions.

All DreamHost accounts have the ability to add site statistics to any fully-hosted website, which you can enable in the panel. There, you can track information such as number of requests, traffic by domain, traffic by file, requests by browser types/OSs/URLs, and more.

To find out more about adding site statistics to your site, please see the following articles:

DreamHost also offers a paid security service in the panel. When enabled, this service allows you to scan your website for malware and alerts you if any issues are found.

To learn more about how to enable the Malware Remover service, please see the following article:

• How do I enable DreamShield?

If there’s anything support may assist you with regarding setting up and loading your website, feel free to submit a support ticket on the Contact Support page of your panel.