[jacques_chester]

Dreamhost is, like every shared hosting provider, hit-and-miss.

I used to host Club Troppo there. When it got slow they basically shrugged and said ... it's shared hosting, what did I expect for $8/month?

[the_bear]

I had the exact same experience, but I was paying for their VPS service. I believe it was over $30/month, and it went down all the time with very little traffic. Dreamhost is a tempting host for a new site because it's so easy to set up, but I think you save time and headaches in the long run starting with someone else.