I’ve been hosting this site with Memset for some time. They’ve provided an excellent, quick and stable service throughout. With a change in emphasis towards providing servers rather than hosting, though, my recent time with them has not been without its strained relationship.

Some time ago my hosting package was done away with to new users and they continued to support existing customers. However, at each turn they’ve attempted to push me towards a virtual server option that I had no interest in. Bandwidth and disk space limitations have caused my costs to spiral yet Memset have put more pressure on me during support. For example, the other day I needed to housekeep some folders from the site that I couldn’t, for one reason or another, access. In the past they’ve been quite happy to do this for me – after all as I’m not in control of it I don’t always have the access I need. This time they warned me that in future they may charge me. Excuse me? They are hosting for me, I have no control over the PHP or Apache installation and the security restrictions. If these restrictions prevent me from removing some files, it’s hardly my problem.

Equally when I kept finding my MySQL database was done on repeated mornings, their solution was again to suggest that I move to a server package where I could control this.

The last straw was when I tried to downgrade my bandwidth requirements. Memset let you add on file size and bandwidth to your package for an additional monthly fee. After some recent caching issues my bandwidth went out of control so I bought some more to get me through one month. Now it’s under control I tried to downgrade to what I had. However, I was helpfully told that I couldn’t and had I thought about a Virtual Server package.

I’ve searched for new hosts in the past but not found any that truly stand out. I’ve tried moving a couple of times but pulled out after finding the new host didn’t offer all the features I wanted in the end. However, after a search yesterday I came across Tsohost. And it was astonishing – glowing reviews and superb value for money.

In the end I purchased their standard hosting package for £34.99 a year. I was paying £15 a month for Memset. This gives me more bandwidth and file space than I had at Memset and with better support – including a helpful customer forum (always useful for looking for problems before you sign up!). They appear knowledgeable and are regularly responding to issues on the forum (as well as writing up articles on how to resolve issues).

The transfer went ahead yesterday – I did it all manually and, yes, I cocked it up. After a stressful evening I got it working. The site is faster than it was at Memset (about 3 times quicker based on home page timings).

And I, for one, welcome our new hosting overlords. I for one expect this won’t be the last time they get a mention on the site – and hopefully always positive.

 Update 19th Jan:

Having some problems, but not the fault of tsohost. The move of my blog from one host to another appears to have unsettled one of the plugins that I’m using and it’s looping, constantly accessing this site and sending my bandwidth use through the roof. I disable the most likely candidates yesterday and that appears to have worked – now it’s a case of narrowing down the culprit. Thankfully (in a weird way) my personal blog is having the same issues so I can cross-check the plugins that I’ve disable here with those that I’m using on that one – it’s now down to 2.

2011 has been a hectic year for me and my WordPress plugins. I’ve learnt an awful lot – especially thanks to the excellent book Professional WordPress Plugin Development. As a result I’ve been re-visiting a lot of my plugins and vastly improving their code quality and capabilities.

I’ve also got rid of my first plugin.

Plugins that have been given a fresh lick of paint are (in no particular order)…

• Artiss PSN Status
• Artiss AdSense Insert
• Artiss Content Reveal
• Artiss Draft List
• Artiss Code Embed
• Artiss Twitter Data
• Artiss Relative Date
• Artiss YouTube Embed

You’ll notice they all begin with “Artiss” – another change which is part of a new re-branding exercise. Some of these, however, were modified early on and will be due a further update to bring them totally in line with current standards.

Existing plugins due for an upgrade in 2012 are…

• Flu Pandemic Level
• Google Docs Viewer
• Simple Social Bookmarks
• Simple Timed Content
• Simple URL Shortener
• WP README Parser

Simple Feed List is to be re-written from scratch with feed duties being all “in house” rather than relying on WP’s built in RSS functionality (which appears to be rather flaky).

Artiss Facebook Link, Simple Twitter Link and Simple Buzz Link will all be merged into one new plugin, Artiss Social Link.

Android App Share, Simple Readbag List, Simple TTIW List and Simple Wakoopa List will all be merged into a single new plugin, the name of which is yet to be decided. It will also allow for other sites that provide XML data.

WP Plugin Cache will be abandoned (as all caching will be performed by individual plugins).

What all of this will mean is a reduction in the number of plugins, by merging a number of similar products. However, all are due to recieve the “full monty” of additions so, rather than adding the odd small feature, most should require minimal maintenance in future. Plugins such as Social Bookmarks and YouTube Embed, however, are likely to continue to have big changed applied to them.

If after this I find some time, I have a number of plugins that I’d like to turn my hand to, including a banner rotation plugin. There are a number available in the market but none that offer what I need (and I’m not being particularly needy either) – it was actually a user who asked me about this after coming across the same problem.

So, I’m into day 11 of this month but my hosting bandwidth (which was only recently doubled) is now at 75% used. What’s going on?

Thankfully, Memset provide cPanel and a host of data analysis tools. As you can see from this graph it’s rocketed since mid-October.

I’d love to say it’s because visitors have gone up as much, but that’s not the case. Looking at the biggest bandwidth hogging files, it’s exactly as normal – in fact nothing in particular is causing it.

What did happen mid-October though is that I started looking and changing the site’s caching. I’d been using PHP Speedy with all options switched on (except for GZIP, which I had in my .htaccess file along with a few other tweaks) but was finding that was breaking Debug Bar and jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries. You can exclude certain scripts from PHP Speedy but that didn’t seem to fix the problem.

I therefore decided to try an alternative method. After some testing I settled on WP Super Cache (to cache the pages – this improved speed but not bandwidth as the same size results are delivered) and WP Minify (this combines and minifies the scripts – something that PHP Speedy did, but I could get WP Minify to work with the aforementioned Debug Bar and Lightbox scripts). I also retained my .htaccess changes.

And that’s how it’s been since. The site’s very quick BUT it looks like the size of the pages being delivered are horrendous.

The cause? Right now, I have no idea and I’m still tinkering – expect to see some site problems over the next few days as I try and resolve it.

What I’ve immediately done is switch off WP Minify and put PHP Speedy back on. Oddly, it’s working with GZIP switched on – if the .htaccess changes are working, this shouldn’t work. I therefore need to check my .htaccess further. Maybe the changes made to this file by WP Super Cache have affected it.

Certainly something has to be done with some urgency and if I have to I’ll abort all changes and had back to PHP Speedy solely (and break those other scripts). My hunch – GZIP isn’t working. Testing tools indicate otherwise.

I’ll update this post, as it may be of use to other developers. And, of course, if you have any ideas please comment and let me know your thoughts.

Update, 16th November.

Sorted. Although online testing tools reported that GZIP was working, it wasn’t. Activating that has put my bandwidth back to normal…

Through some further testing I’ve settled on using WP Minify rather than PHP Speedy. I’m also using WP Super Cache but note that this doesn’t affect bandwidth, only speed.