Comments on: Slow loading times and outages

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 16:33:42 +0000

Hi sam
Thanks for your input. No, we don’t use caching at the moment. I have looked at the plugin WP Super Cache on several occasions but each time felt concerned that unregistered users, the vast majority of visitors to the site, would be presented with a cached page that did not contain the latest comment. I may have misinterpreted the explanation of how the plugin works but that is the way it seemed to me.

It is unfortunately one of those things that I am not able to try out in the sandbox and I am wary of doing so on a live site.

By: sam

sam — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:18:43 +0000

Gaufrid, does this site use any caching? If the front page is built on the fly for every refresh, that will be doing a lot more work than necessary (even though this still shouldn’t be much overall).

I don’t have much experience of actually setting this sort of thing up, but putting something like memcached (memcached.org) in front of the backend is supposedly very straightforward and should mean you only need to use CPU when page content changes (which I imagine is much less often that page views). To be clear this would work for all pages, not just the front page.

Of course, you may have something like this in place already, so sorry if I’m preaching to the choir! If not, feel free to email me if you want more info, though as I said I’m not really expert in this – you may do better just reading around online.

By: The Trafites

The Trafites — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 10:27:04 +0000

It appears this is a major issue with bluehost - see the link: http://bluehostsucks.com/bluehost-complaints/excessive-cpu-usage/ Nick

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 03:47:02 +0000

5000 page views per day is nothing. That’s about what, 5 per minute on average? Glad things seem to be fixed now though! (I missed the opportunity to be frustrated, as my viewing is sporadic) I am assuming the host finally removed the dead mouse from their CPU heatsink.

By: stiofain

stiofain — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 01:54:38 +0000

Looks like it is sorted
congrats

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 01:53:44 +0000

Right now, site’s bloody fast. Best in ages.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:18:00 +0000

Hi again FlutterBy
“Like several others, I find it very hard to believe that this website would impose a heavy processing load on the host.”

An average of around 5000 page views per day, according to the site stats, may have someting to do with it.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:11:28 +0000

Hi FlutterBy
“In your position I’d be asking for some hard stats from the hosting company as evidence of their statements. I’d also be looking at other possible hosting companies!!!”

I have done that and am doing so. The site is not closing down, at least if I have anything to do with it. I started trying to resolve the problem at just after 4:30am this morning and am still trying to do so at past 11pm tonight.

By: FlutterBy

FlutterBy — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:50:06 +0000

Like several others, I find it very hard to believe that this website would impose a heavy processing load on the host.

In your position I’d be asking for some hard stats from the hosting company as evidence of their statements. I’d also be looking at other possible hosting companies!!!

I’m glad you’ve posted an explanation of what’s going on, because I’ve had quite a few very slow initial loads of the homepage recently, and also the “Error establishing a database connection” message several times. I was worried this might foreshadow the site closing down… *shudders* … UNTHINKABLE.

Thanks for all the hard work you do keeping 15^2 running. Good luck with solving this. Good to know it’s temporary!

By: Median

Median — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:27:19 +0000

Gaufrid, please email me. I want to say something which I hope will help.