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.

A number of years ago now this site started off as my personal blog. Politics, news and general rants were the topics, with the occasional review of tech products that I’d bought. In time the latter started to take over and my new-found interest in writing WordPress plugins.

As a result the site has become more a commercial venture and personal posts now seem inappropriate to the point where I rarely add any. None-the-less I wanted to still put finger to keyboard occasionally so I decided to separate out my personal posts. I looked at 3 different ways to do this…

1. Get the site to exclude personal posts and list them in their own separate section. Sadly, excluding one category from certain parts of WordPress is not as simple as it seems and just caused me problems when I tried it.
2. Use the Multisite option in WordPress to set up a secondary site. Unfortunately, as I have an established site with set (and indexed) URLs, introducing a 2nd site would likely to cause problems.
3. Create another site. Thankfully I already had one. A few months ago I decided to create a separate sandboxed WordPress installation for testing my plugins. Hardly used except for the odd bit of testing I realised this would be the ideal candidate – I can still use it for testing as if this site goes down for a short while it’s not a big deal.

So, I’ve done it. The sandbox website has had a splendid new theme (although not of my design – I used a free “out of the box” one) and I’ve transferred over all my personal posts. Many of these are quite old so were in need of TLC – videos spilling out of page widths, missing images, etc. I also had to go through and add new categories to them all (and there’s over 100 posts!).

Click here to visit my new personal site – I’ve already christened it by way of a new post today.

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

There are a number of card readers on the market, but this one I particularly like. It’s only compatible with 4 card types but it’s the latter card that’s most interesting – MS, SD, Mini SD, Micro SD. Unlike other card readers which say they are Micro SD compatible, but they expect you to use a converter in the SD card slot, this has a slot for Micro SD cards.

The reader is really quite compact measuring just 7.5cm long, 2.5cm wide and 1.6cm deep. The top is see through plastic of different colours (mine is blue) and the rest of the device is sold white plastic. There is a long loop at one end, meaning that you can add this to a keyring if you wish. A 2cm captive USB cable tucks underneath.

Plug your memory card in and you’ll find the speeds are comparable with pretty much any other card reader (including those built into laptops).

Signalex has recently repackaged the product and it can be found on the Poundland website. It appears to be the same but they are promoting the fact that it is USB 2. I believe the current one is already USB 2 as the speeds it was reporting were higher than USB 1 would be able to produce.

Summary of Signalex Multislot USB Card Reader

Brilliant – compact, cheap and has it’s own very useful micro USB port. An essential for any PC user’s toolbag!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 3rd January 2012.