CPU spikes 100% because of index.php?

  • Hello,

    my blog loads sometimes very slow. I’ve already done all the recommended steps to speed up the site, but it’s actually the server that’s slow.
    When I asked my webhost about it, they told my my CPU is too high.
    I’ve had an eye on it for the past few days and it really is mostly between 80-100%.

    I tried the following already:
    – Turned off all plugins
    – Changed to a standard theme (Twenty Twelve)
    – disabled Cron jobs
    – enabled Query monitor plugin

    I’m not a developer and I don’t know much aboud codes, but seeing that neither another theme nor turning off the plugin helps, I feel that it must have to do with WordPress core files?

    Then again I received the following reply from my webhost:

    “I have checked your resource usage and below are the process which consumes your resource:-

    ===
    zoomingj 833278 44.0 0.0 265764 23088 ? S 07:17 0:01 lsphp
    zoomingj 831533 16.2 0.0 292352 49268 ? S 07:16 0:01 lsphp:/home/zoomingj/public_html/index.php
    zoomingj 831777 15.4 0.0 295164 51560 ? R 07:16 0:00 lsphp:/home/zoomingj/public_html/index.php
    zoomingj 831819 13.8 0.0 291992 48272 ? S 07:16 0:00 lsphp:/home/zoomingj/public_html/index.php
    zoomingj 831998 10.5 0.0 267328 23360 ? R 07:16 0:00 lsphp:/home/zoomingj/public_html/index.php
    ===

    You are recommended to check this with a developer, he can help you to optimize the site perfectly or can consider moving to a higher plan which offers more resource.
    ”

    So, ist my index.php causing this? But why does CPU still hike when I use a standard theme then?

    Here’s my index.php (just the standard one, hasn’t been changed since 2013):

    <?php
/**
 * Front to the WordPress application. This file doesn't do anything, but loads
 * wp-blog-header.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 */

/**
 * Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it.
 *
 * @var bool
 */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wp-blog-header.php' );

    Anybody has any advice for me?

    I’m totally lost here.
    I’m so close to make a clean install and search for a new theme and start from zero … but honestly I don’t have the time and the nerves for this….. -_-;

    Thankful for any advice you might have. ??

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • There’s no reason why index.php on its own would cause high CPU load.
    Other than that what’s url of your website?

    Thread Starter japanworm

    (@japanworm)

    Thank you very much for your reply.
    That’s what I thought, too.
    But I’ve tried everything I could think of already – without success.

    My blog can be found at: zoomingjapan.com

    There are few more things that could be done speed-wise – https://gtmetrix.com/reports/zoomingjapan.com/ux5O428n but all in all the homepage is just above 1MB in size nothing too big. Sucuri says the website is clean. And you said that you’ve tried disabling all plugins… You could as well re-upload WP 4.7.4 to eliminate WP as the problem but I doubt it is.
    At this moment I’m inclined to blame hosting. What you could do is find some free hosting company with cPanel, that gives you a subdomain if you don’t have your own domain and then try to make copy of your current website there. Then you can monitor resources from cPanel and see how it goes.

    Thread Starter japanworm

    (@japanworm)

    Actually, it’s a bit bigger, only the main page is smaller.
    It’s more like 2,5MB: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/zoomingjapan.com/gBnhh5cY

    Thank you for checking.
    I don’t know. I actually think I have a very trustworthy host, so I’m really surprised.

    Thread Starter japanworm

    (@japanworm)

    I did notice that the CPU spikes are even worse when I turn off all plugins and use the WordPress standard theme “Twenty Twelve”.

    Here’s what Putty tells me about the CPU usage.
    There’s clearly something wrong.

    I also noticed a “weird” behavior in my Dashboard.
    Like when I deactivate plugins they are still shown as activa although they’re clearly deactivated. And when I refresh the page it shows me the state from 10 minutes ago with all plugins deactivated or whatever it was 10 minutes ago.
    Same happens with comments I just deleted. The next second they’re there again.

    And this all while caching plugins are deactivated.

    What’s going on?
    Something wrong with my core installation?
    Should I hire someone to check my core installation or just do a fresh clean installation of WP? …. It’s been running for 6 years without major problems, though.

    If you haven’t resolved the issue by now ?? the fact that you’ve seeing 10 minutes delay in a page change even though you’ve deactivated all caching plugins, can only mean that your host has introduced some on its side that you have no control of, and maybe, just maybe it is that caching that causes high CPU usage, due to something… somewhere. There’s no way of pinpointing it.

    Thread Starter japanworm

    (@japanworm)

    Page speed is much better, but the CPU usage is still skyrocketing at times.
    For now, I’ll let it go and observe it for a while longer.

    Well, if you have free time, you can open an account at 000webhost.com, make a copy of your WP website there and let it run for a while (discourage search engines from visiting in the setup, to avoid duplicate content issue) and let it run. Since it is free hosting, you can be damn sure they’ll jump on you if your website takes too much of CPU resources. ?? If they don’t then you’ll at least know that it is not your website that’s causing it.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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