ok lets make this a little simpler than my last topic.

I found this site which everyone who follows it seems to be getting results from, though it says "You are expected to be knowledgeable in the UNIX shell." which i have got no idea what that even is.

I tried to follow the instuctions as best as I could with no luck so could someone please explain that to me in simpler/noob terms.

Also i can not use .htaccess files so is there anyway i can do this without them?

Thanks,
Scottmandoo

btw im asking here because it also states "Support for these instructions is not available from DreamHost tech support."

think of "shell" as "dos prompt for unix".
there are several of them and each has a superset of the same basic commands.

When you log into a host via ssh, after logging in you "get a shell" where you can type commands.

Most people mean Bourne Shell (or Born again shell) when they generically say "shell". There's also C shell, Korn shell and a bunch of others (like openssl and CPAN shells) specifically used as a sort of client to specialized interfaces.

A "shell script" is nothing more than some shell commands put into a file one command per line.

You save it as something.sh
chmod 755 something.sh
then you can run it like a program.

At the top of the script, you specify which shell should run and interpret it with a "shebang" line:
for bourne again shell

To learn more about linux, and a short introduction to the shell go here

If you are working with a unix like system (linux, bsd, osx) you need to know this. It will make it possible to use the system and make it bend to your will.

cheers!