After over 1000+ days as a faithful dreamhost customer I finally decided to try something new with my hosting provider. I recently signed up for an account at linode.com, who provides virtual private servers for the everyday folk starting at $19.95 a month. The higher cost (compared to what I was paying for dreamhost) is justified by the fact that you pretty much have full access to the box and you’re free to do whatever you want with it. No shared resources, no limitations, and no easy 1-click installs. Yup, everything must be done from scratch… starting with the LAMP install to configuring DNS, security, and networking. Linode has provided a pretty complete and kick-ass set of guides to get you up and running quickly. Hopefully I’ll learn a thing or two configuring and managing a full blown linux server.

I’ll miss those dreamhost newsletters though :(