Slowness on Dreamhost

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]
A load time of 1-2 seconds isn't that bad... this page here loaded in 1.594 seconds.

Regardless, Dreamhost is notorious for over-selling. You may just have a lot of "neighbors" that are using a lot of resources on their sites.

My recommendation:
1. Install the YSlow extension for Firefox and browse to your site. Look over the results it returns and make appropriate corrections.

2. If it's still slow - complain to Dreamhost. They really hate moving you to another server, but if you complain enough they will. If they refuse, switch to a different host. Lunarpages is pretty good and they will buy out the rest of your existing contract with another host, if you switch (meaning, if you owe DH 3 more months at $10, Lunarpages will pay you $30 to switch).