Are you using a blogging package provided by Dreamhost? If so, it’s probably the multi-user version of WordPress. I’ve run into this at another webhost provider (1and1.com). If that’s the case, you can’t get to the wp-content directory because many users use the same files. If you changed a file you’d be changing everyone’s blog.
The solution, assuming Dreamhost provides PHP and MYSQL, is to download the WordPress package and install it on your server space. I did that with 1and1 and it worked very well.
