My new recommendation is TSO Host based upon 2 years of solid performance.

What’s changed at Red Fox / What’s good about TSO Host?

As you will see from my bio, one of my interests is in running a number of Websites. My hosting has been spread across a few hosts including Red Fox Hosting.

Until recently one of my webhosts was Red Fox Hosting .. a host that deals exclusively with Windows Hosting. I joined them around 2006/7 and at that time was delighted by the reliability and speed of support .. even though it was run by one person. I heartily endorsed them at that time.

Over the last couple of years, the level of support has gone downhill and I have moved all my websites over to TSO Host whom I have been using for this site as well as many others for 2 years now without a single complaint unlike my later experiences with Red Fox Hosting.

I am unhappy with the way that Red Fox Hosting censors negative comment and either moves it into private customer and reseller forums OR deletes it altogether, denying prospective customers the opportunity to see the issues in advance of signing up with them. Red Fox also displays incredible naivety with respect to understanding reseller relationships with their own customers and the need for resellers to be notified of changes in advance of any notices sent to users.

It was with deep regret despite all attempts to counsel Red Fox Hosting about the issues and what needed to be done to address them (some very minor) failed completely and ultimately that I felt the need to consolidate my hosting at TSO Host.

Examples of the issues at RedFox Hosting :

1. If your site consumes too much resource (at discretion of Red Fox Hosting) and they disable your site, the owner has made it clear that he sees no duty of care to even notify you of that. Even though customers accepted the potential need to shut down some sites without notice, the poll showed 100% agreement that it was apopropriate to tell the Webmaster. Red Fox were unmoved.

2. Red Fox shows no commercial awareness .. they received complaints that notices were sent to email addresses where the email account held an insecure password .. threatening cessation of service. When challenged that Resellers were not notified, they argued that emails were queued to resellers at the same time .. still not appreciating that resellers need advance notice in order to advise their own customers

3. In general, support has gone downhill with even Critical tickets often going ignored for hours and on some occasions it could be days. Offers of help as unpaid ‘escalation’ or ‘filter’ to then send only proper critical tickets through has gone largely ignored. For the last month, they have been ‘thinking’ about how they handle out of hours support.

Today, I moved my last site across to TSO Host and posted an open letter on the Red Fox Hosting Reseller forum explaining why I had come to a decision to leave .. but ultimately wishing well for the future and hoping that the requested changes would take place.  Censorship prevailed yet again and that post was deleted leading me to post here where MY censorship rules prevail.

In contrast, I have been nothing but satisfied with TSO Host. When other hosts failed me, TSO Host came to the rescue. In 2009 when I first moved to TSO Host, I did so because other hosts were unable to deal with traffic. TSO Host and their cloud solution proved more than capable and nothing was more demonstrable when a manager from ToysRUs contacted me to ask whether I could moderate my traffic in some way as one of my sites was sending visitors to ToysRUs in droves, causing their own server to crash … whilst my own TSO Host cluster based site just kept on going.

TSO support is also first rate with responses in minutes with issue resolution just as quick from knowledgable and personal contact. TSO also offers a range of hosting solutions from Linux to Windows and hybrid solutions inbetween.

I have now switched allegiance from Red Fox Hosting to TSO Host having been with them for over two years to properly test them out. If you are disillusioned with your own host, then I recommend them to you.

Disclosure : If you do follow any of the above links and take out hosting with TSO, then I will make a commission that will help reduce my own hosting bills, but I can assure you that my review and recommendation is based upon experience rather than gain .. and is, in part, influenced by my growing disappointment with Red Fox. If a business refuses to listen and adapt to its customers needs, then it needs to sit up and listen. If it doesn’t review its own practices and improve, then it deserves to lose business to other companies such as TSO Host who excel at what they do.

If anyone wants to ask specific questions regarding my experiences with either Red Fox or TSO Host, then post them here and I will answer ASAP.

Earlier roles within BP have included Project Management and Operational roles managing billing teams as well as time spent working within IT designing bespoke systems solutions and working in substantial projects to deploy SAP systems.

Other jobs that I have performed prior to joining BP have been working for Government agencies as a Civil Servant and as a Motor Vehicle Rental Manager.

Because my role was relocated from the UK to Malaysia, I am now seeking a new appointment and am available to take up a suitable new post immediately. I have recently gained accreditation as a Prince2 Practitioner and would ideally seek a Project Management position developing and using past skills.

It has been a bad year for me, having lost my job and my father in a few short weeks … here’s hoping for a bright start to 2011.

Please browse my online CV here or email me at jobsearch@the-camerons.co.uk if you would prefer to receive a CV in MS Word Format.

In trying to make myself more competitive in the job market after being made redundant from BP, I decided to improve (get) formal Project Manager qualifications. As a result, I booked myself onto a Prince2 foundation and practioner course held this week which includes both stages of exam.

I admit that I was not prepared (i.e. not advised in advance of the commitment by the reseller of the training) for the intensity of the course, needing around 3-4 hours of homework (Other providers may vary according to the materials that they provide you for examination prep work) each night to meet the course timetable.

It is all over now. I have my Prince 2 Accreditation at foundation level (provisional results given during the course), building upon my practical experience of projects but now waiting to find out how I did at practioner level. Personally, I feel pretty comfortable about passing with the excellent training and materials provided by Maven Training and having passed both trial papers in exam conditions.

Prince2 may not teach you anything new about how Projects should be managed, but I found it a fascinating insight into the principles and themes that are making Prince2 a De Facto standard for running a project and it cannot do my CV any harm to have that under my belt.