Website hosting, like many other things in life, is not guaranteed to have 100% uptime. There may be times when your website is down, or loading slowly. If you are using DreamHost as your website hosting company, it’s a simple matter to submit a support ticket to find out what’s up and get whatever may be causing the issue resolved. This article assumes you are using DreamHost.com for your website hosting company. (Note, if you’re reading this, you’re NOT on DreamHost’s website, you’re reading my blog. I am a completely different company, Aldebaran Web Design, I am not DreamHost.com)

Update: DreamHost now offers Live Chat!

Follow these steps to notify DreamHost that your website is down or slow:

1. Log In. Log into your DreamHost control panel at: http://www.dreamhost.com. Enter the email address you used when you signed up for hosting and your password under the “Customer Login” section.

2. Click on Support -> Contact Support. This is on the lower left-hand corner of the navigation.

3. Select “Website” and “Next”. Notice there are other things you select here too. The support is not just for notifying them of website down issues, but everything connected with your hosting account.

4. Select your domain and “Next”. If you have an online store, you may see your domain listed twice. One is actually the “http” version and the other is the “https” version. Go ahead and check both.

5. Continue through the process with “Next” until you get to the Pick a Category.

6. Pick a Category and “Next”. Highlight whichever issue fits your situation. Site down or site slow are good choices if your site is not coming up.

7. Submit Support Ticket and “Send Message Now” . Fill out the following info: Name, Email, Subject, Message, Relevant URL, Request Type (be truthful here, if your site is down, the “OMG, People are Dying” is appropriate, but if it’s not this serious, then pick a less dramatic type).

You should expect to get a response from DreamHost anywhere from a few minutes, to a day…depending on what day and time you submitted your support ticket. I’ve had extremely good luck with this system, and literally every single support request that I’ve submitted for myself, or on behalf of my clients, has been resolved in a timely manner.

Phone Support:

DreamHost offers phone support. If you check the box for phone support, they will charge you a monthly fee of $9.95 and they offer a fixed number of calls per month. Note that they call you, not the other way round. Typically I don’t need phone support because their email support is fast and often resolves my issues. But if you want to talk to them on the phone, you need to click this option and fill out the times you want them to call you. If you’ve activated this, remember you’ll need to deactivate it after your issue is resolved, otherwise you’ll continue to be charged the extra monthly fee.

(Note to people who read this blog article and call my business: DreamHost does NOT HAVE A PHONE NUMBER you can call. If you call me demanding a phone number, I can’t give it to you because they don’t have a phone number to call. It doesn’t exist. Follow the steps in this article to contact them online and submit a call-back request. Even if you ask me for the phone number three times, I can’t give it to you because, again, I don’t have it, it doesn’t exist.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under the DreamHost category. Read other Aldebaran Website Design Blog articles by returning to main blog page. Need a blog added to your website? Click here to read about blog installation services or click here to contact Aldebaran Web Design.