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.

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My host is Memset who, I have to say, are superb. But you pay for that quality and I was already having to pay more than I was last year due to bandwidth increases (you pesky visitors keep coming here!). There’s only so much money you can throw at something though before you have to have a bit more of a radical re-think. So, I made the decision to move my hosting  to UK2 and one of their rather professional looking business packages. Bandwidth would no longer be an issue but, as is often the case with cheaper providers, the occasional downtime may be.

I pointed my domain (which is held at 1&1) to the UK2 servers and although my holding page was now appearing I couldn’t get FTP access. I raised a support request but didn’t hear anything until last night – it had taken some time for the IP changes to be propagated to their FTP server. This morning it was working so I uploaded the site but I was still getting the holding site. Another support request and they noticed that my site was pointing to the wrong IP. Now corrected, my site was live! Unfortunately I was getting server configuration errors – this was using an exact snapshot of the site as held by Memset.

Meantime, Memset had contacted me and I was in a position where I could double my bandwidth by paying just £1 extra a month.

By this time the decision was now easy. I have swapped my nameservers back to Memset and have cancelled my UK2 hosting – thankfully they have a 30 day money back guarantee.

Unfortunately, it comes with  a sting in its tail – they haven’t refunded me all my money. They have retained an administration fee for the free domain they provided me…

When you purchase the Business web hosting a free domain comes with it, because you are keeping the domain and cancelling the web hosting we have deducted the registration fee.

I’ve pointed out that they didn’t actually provide me with a new domain, I’d simply pointed my existing one to their nameservers at no cost to them. Eventually, they relented and paid me my full amount.

But, right now, I’m just happy to have the site working. Welcome back Memset!

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There is plenty of competition already in the market and because it is so new, there aren’t any reviews available – this is a new site trying to get a foot on the rung. The owner doesn’t intend to contribute but, instead, rely on customer submitted reviews. This is has in common with many of the alternatives. Personally, I think this is an opportunity wasted. With so many competing sites, you really need some kind of USP. Customer submitted reviews can sometimes be their own worst enemy with people complaining about issues that really weren’t the hosts problem, or giving them full scores simply because they hadn’t experienced any issues up until then. The big tech review sites ignore Web Host reviews as well, so this would be a great opportunity to have the reviews led by a single person doing a fair comparison between the alternatives.

Hosting Sites Reviews only has a handful of hosting companies on their list at the moment – this list, however, is consistent with many other sites so I wonder if it has anything to do with their affiliate schemes. If a site wants to show itself as fair and all-encompassing, it should really give the opportunity to everyone. I use Memset and (grumble, grumble) Streamline.net but neither are on the list (I’d love to write a review of the latter!).

But, this is a new site and I’m sure it will grow and improve over time. Already is show promise by dividing the companies into categories – green, php, asp hosting, etc. It even has it’s own Facebook page.

Website hosting is rarely taken as seriously as it should be so more and more sites dedicated to the reviewing of these companies can only be a good thing.

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For testing reasons I have had website compression turned off for a while which hasn’t helped, and the new site design that I’m working on will help with a smaller footprint. None-the-less, as this site gets more interest, that bandwidth is going to be an issue.

So I emailed Memset and they got back to me within 22 minutes (impressive!). The problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that I’m on a hosting package that they no longer provide and the most basic now available is aimed firmly at businesses. Although not too expensive at first sight, extras such as cPanel and phpMyAdmin are extra and bump up the price beyond my range.

But, you know, I don’t want to go elsewhere. Memset has been excellent to me.

Thankfully Nathan at Memset had a solution – moving up to another (erm, I assuming, still on their records but not officially available) package, the same as mine but with greater disk storage and double the bandwidth. Within an hour of spotting the problem, the site was back! I didn’t even have to pay anything up front – as I’d recently paid for 2 years of hosting up-front, he simply took it off that money and brought my renewal date forward.

Hats off to Memset!

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Ok, yes, of course I do. It’s great fun.

The smiley above is one such change, as I updated my “smiley pack”. I’ve also introduced the calendar which you can see at the beginning of each post. The way to do this is relatively easy (assuming you know your CSS and a bit of PHP). At first I had an iPhone style background for it, but after a scourer of the ‘net, I came across this more suitable dark version. Very nice, and I chose a text colour to match (it was white before and looked obviously stuck over the top).

The menu at the top has recently changed, to include some popular categories, and the sidebar had a refresh a while ago.

And, thanks to Tony, I’ve now added footnotes¹.

Finally, I’ve settled into Twitter and am now happy to say what plugin I’m using for that! I kept swapping at first as I tried various Twitter plugins, all of which didn’t work quite how I wanted. I wanted two pieces of functionality – to be able to inform Twitter of a post and to be able to display my latest Twitter – and thought I’d have to have two plugins. In the end, though, I cam across Twitter Tools which does both and has all the functionality that I wanted. Perfect.

Not WordPress related, but whilst on the subject of Twitter, I also experimented with Firefox plugins – TwitterFox ended up the best of that bunch (I wanted a simple way to post Twitters from my browser, and one that didn’t fowl up through my works proxy and firewall).

However, as much as I’ve plugged into my blog, I’ve also taken out – there were quite a few functions that I simply wasn’t using. It’s also keeping this installation as lean as possible – thanks to the shoddy speed of my hosting I need all I can get. As soon as I can scrape some money together I’m off to Memset (yes, yes, I keep promising that I know).

1. and this is an example

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Well, they didn’t have to, so I have to thank them for that. Both this blog and the Copy+ site has been updated appropriately – time will tell if it will help.

Longer term it’s still my intention to move to Memset.

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Memset
They host the BMTG website for free. All you pay for is your domain name, which you can buy elsewhere and point to their nameservers. Their service is excellent as if the quality of their hosting. Oh, and they’re carbon neutral

PayPal
They provide reduced charges to non-profits. Google Checkout doesn’t. Never-the-less the PayPal non-profit charges aren’t much more generous than the standard Google Checkout rate.

There is also Google for Non-profits, a collection of Google tools and sites. Unfortunately, it’s just that. And the link no longer appears to work, even though it was only launched a couple of months ago.

Google Grants offers 3 months of free advertising to, well, people them deem to be appropriate – submit your details and cross your fingers.

If you’re aware of any useful services for non-profits/charities, please let me know.

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Having said that it was pointed out recently that a sub-domain, used by members, was broken. It too was displaying the same error and it turned out to be due a PHP variable I was displaying on the screen (invisibily at the bottom of the page for debugging purposes). Not sure why it caused a server error, but removal of it fixed the problem. At the time I thought it was odd that it hadn’t affected the main site because that too used the same variable. Anyway, I changed the main site as well. That was weeks ago.

So, the site is down. It’s been like that since, at least, first thing this morning and there’s no sign of it working. The host, Streamline.net, “escalated it to a 2nd line engineer”. Whatever that means. But they’re saying it might not be fixed within 24 hours. Great.

Which is why I’ve taken this opportunity to sign up with Memset. Not only are they regularly voted as the UK’s best host, but they provide their service free of charge for charities. So I’m already set up and I’ve copied the site into a test region. I just need the BMTG site to come back up so that I can  start testing the Memset version. If it offers me everything I need, I’ll be waving goodbye to Streamline. I’ve been plagued by downtime and speed issues (particularly FTP speed).

This site is also hosted by Streamline. Memset is more expensive for your general hosting, but I’m certainly seeing the advantage. The BMTG site will be a test – if all goes well, then I can’t see any reason why I won’t migrate this domain to Memset as well.

And they’re carbon neutral.

Update (15/04/2008):

Streamline are officially rubbish. The BMTG site was a combination of slow or inoperative for about a week and all I got was messages that engineers were looking at it. Oh, and I couldn’t access the MySQL tables.

Thankfully, I use MySQL Tools to create regular backups on my home PC, so I used some of those to rebuild the tables at Memset. I also decided to rush out the version of the website that I was working on – I’m still testing this now even though it’s been live for a number of days.

The hard bit came when I found that Memset don’t allow domain transfers. Rather than keep the domain at Streamline, I decided to move it to 1&1. Their prices are also remarkable cheap. So, I moved the IPS TAG from Streamline to 1&1 (whilst still keeping the DNS pointing to Streamline). When that was done, I simply updated the DNS at 1&1 to Memset. If there was any downtime during all of this, it wasn’t very long at all.

And Memset hosting really flies… far better than it was ever at Streamline. In a word – “superb”. And free for charity hosting.

Before closing down the account at Streamline I asked, because of the issues we’d had, whether they’d consider (especially as this was a charity not-for-profit) refunding part of the remaining hosting fees. They ignored this request and simply closed it down. Nice.

I still have Artiss.co.uk (including this blog) hosted by Streamline, because I paid for 2 years hosting back in December. Unless anyone wants to donate some money, I can’t justify moving right now. Ironically, I wrote this blog offline a couple of days ago but have been unable to upload it due to my blog being down. Thanks to Streamline.

Update (01/12/2008):

Well, you could tell I needed to get some development work tonight on the Copy+ site because the host, Streamline.net, allowed the SQL server to fall over in a crumpling heap. Therefore bringing down both this site and that one (they share SQL servers) for a good couple of hours during the busy tea-time period.

Thanks.

As if the slow site responses weren’t enough.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again… I’m moving. In the New Year. To Memset.

Update (23/12/2008):

So, this site was down last weekend. My host, Streamline.net, didn’t show anything in their service status and didn’t do anything until Monday lunchtime.

So I contacted them to find out what happened and to generally enquire about the problems I’m having with slow response times.

They chose to ignore the first query and the second, via  a rambling reply, can be summed up in 3 sentences…

“..you may get performance issues as you are using shared hosting”

“We have tested the server you are on and cannot find any issues”

“Streamline don’t provide support on your contents… [we] have to assume your contents are at fault.”

Funny how other hosts are able to provide shared hosting and yet a decent amount of performance at the same time. And to just blame it on me (or rather WordPress) is staggering.

Update (14/01/2009)

Now that I’ve finally moved “home” away from Streamline and to Memset, I can talk about my experience.

And I would say that Streamline are the shoddiest bunch of merchants I’ve come across. My site crawled, especially when using MySQL, and they denied there were any issues.

Recently my site was down for 4 days – across a weekend, unfortunately, when they appear to do nothing. I asked repeatedly for details of what had caused the problems but they ignored my requests. I also highlighted my site speed issues but they said it wasn’t them, but my website code.

Somehow they have an uptime guarantee. I didn’t try and claim against it because most of my problems were speed related rather than being out-and-out down. Besides, a lot of the down-time didn’t appear on their Service Status so I suspect they’ll say that doesn’t count.

But they say you get what you pay for. Streamline is half the cost of Memset. But you don’t get half the quality. Not even a tenth. If you’re considering Streamline because they’re cheap… save up and go elsewhere.

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