new to dreamhost here and have followed the wiki on this but still need some additional help if possible. I want to be able to preview a site while I work on it, before I point the live domain to my dreamhost server. I've added the domain via the Control Panel, and all my files sit in the directory, /home/user/mysite.com - which is correct I think. When trying to follow the wiki with regards the mirroring details, I find that the only option I have is as follows, where I can't change any of these details:
Create the mirror at: mysite.com Mirror this site: existingsite.com
The existingsite.com is just a live site sitting on the same server space. Is there something I'm missing here? Probably a newb mistake no doubt :)
Mirroring is for you to point a domain to an existing site. Hence this means you can mirror on 1 site. ie. both existingsite.com and mirrorsite.com points to the same server space.
If you want to create a development site, you probably are talking about 2 installations.
In this case, a quick and dirty trick I use is to create a development subdomain, dev.existingsite.com and fully host it. You normally get a /home/user/dev.existingsite.com folder with this. When your site is fully ready, you can edit your fully hosted existingsite.com and point the web directory to dev.existingsite.com. A better way is to SSH in and move the files.
There's an option copy files over in the settings page. Anyway dreamhost live help is pretty good. This is definitely something they will answer.