HostPapa says I have High Resource Usage with a lot of “Entry Proc Faults.”

These links can help you with Bing and Google bot crawl rates:
https://www.webnots.com/bingbot-crawl-control-settings/
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/48620

While this could decrease overall traffic, I don’t think it’s the root cause. It looks like the top process consuming the most resource is WP_Cron (wp-cron.php). WP_Cron doesn’t normally run all that often, but it’s possible for plugins or themes to schedule frequent tasks. If these tasks are not carefully composed, it’s possible for them to consume considerable resource.

Narrowing down which module is the cause could get rather tedious if you have a lot of plugins, but the nature of a plugin’s purpose could be a clue to which are more likely to be the cause. If the resource faults are evident in a real time monitor (accessed through the hosting control panel), you could selectively deactivate plugins and switch themes and watch for a decrease in resource usage.

The faults may not be evident in real time. If so, use your access logs to help you narrow down the cause. Your current access logs will give you a good idea how often wp-cron.php requests occur. Selectively disable plugins or switch themes, then check the logs again after a while to see if the WP_Cron rate has decreased or not. With some hosts, you’ll need to turn on log archiving or something similar in order to see a reasonable access history.

Thanks, @bcworkz. I’ll pass along your commentary to my web developer, as she can make better sense of it. The site is actually running relatively few plugins, and they’re all updated. Furthermore, no new plugins to suddenly make a difference in terms of resource usage, unless All in One SEO is a culprit. That’s the only one I recently added, thinking it would help me make my posts more effective. If anyone knows if All in One SEO might be a problem, please let me know. (Oh, I also have Google Analytics for WordPress. Do I even need this one for anything?)

Update: Usually I just see the middle item, but at this very moment the Excess Resource Usage shows three issues:

You have reached the limits within the past 24 hours

    CPU resources limit was reached for your site
    You have reached the entry processes (the number of simultaneously running php and cgi scripts, as well as cron jobs and shell sessions) limit 3 times
    I/O usage resources limit was reached for your site

@corrinarusso, if you’re around, I’ve appreciated your help in the past, and I wonder if you suspect a similar situation as the one where you commented here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/hosting-provider-says-im-using-too-many-resources/

I have All in One on a number of sites. None have ever had resource issues. All it really does is insert certain meta tags into pages. I don’t see how that would significantly impact resources.

If you’re not interested in Google Analytics statistics, then you don’t need the plugin. All the plugin does is insert some small script blocks onto pages. Again, I don’t think it contributes to much resource usage. My sites are not very heavily trafficked, so even something that’s more resource intensive might not run up against any limits.

It is possible that your site gets enough traffic that a basic shared hosting plan is inadequate. Some low budget hosts set very low limits for their basic plans so that the need to upgrade happens frequently. I don’t know if your host uses this practice or not. I don’t have enough knowledge to speculate on whether 5k hits/day on a site like yours would stress a basic shared hosting plan or not.

OTOH, Cron processes being tops in the list is suspicious to me and not directly related to the level of regular site traffic, but I don’t know what could be causing so much Cron traffic.

Thanks again, @bcworkz. I agree that the two plugins discussed are not likely the issue. I disabled WP_Cron and that helped a bit, but still some faults. Will be monitoring the situation while still seeking a solution.

Will be monitoring the situation while still seeking a solution.

One of those possible “solutions” might be to simply research other hosts that won’t nickel-and-dime you on CPU cycles.

And if you decide to go this route, take extra care to NOT move to another host that shares the same modus operandi, infrastructure, support staff, and even ownership as your current cost — as your experience is likely to be the same there.

Good luck!