Just installed Drupal 6 onto Dreamhost and hit a few issues which I suspect are common. For the PHP/Drupal fans out there these will seem petty but I'm not a PHP developer but do want to set-up Drupal quickly and easily.

1. Don't use the dreamhost one click install, it will set up a highly managed version of drupal which won't be in your home folder and you won't be able to add modules or themes making it pretty useless.

2. Set up Drupal manually:

Follow the instruction in the dreamhost wiki but bear in mind the following points:

1. In the downloaded drupal folder make sure you rename the file default.settings.php in sites/default to just settings.php or you'll get a confusing cgi-bin/install.php not found error when you try and run the istall.

2. Using the dreamhost control panel, ensure that you have php 5 running by going to Manage Domains, choose your domain, choose the Edit link and change the php setting from 4 to 5 or during the install you'll get a warning about (Currently using PHP register globals Enabled ('1')). I got this warning and after changing to 5 from 4 had to wait about 5 mins before the install would work.

3. Make sure that the files are CHMODed to 755 as per the wiki instructions.

4. When you upload your drupal folder make sure that it includes the hidden .htaccess file or you won't be able to enable clean urls.