At first I thought it was Jetpack, so I killed it and replaced the subscription feature I was after by using MailPoet3 instead.

When I opened a post to edit it to today, the CPU spiked. (And my site was then disabled for a short time.) But I edited the post again later and the CPU didn’t spike.

My only active plugins:
– Classic Editor
– Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket (only allows ajax on post edits, with 60s saves)
– LiteSpeed Cache (recommended by my hosting service)
– Loginizer
– MailPoet 3

Any advice? I’m perplexed!

Thanks,
Andrew

Please attempt to disable all plugins, and switch to the default Twenty Nineteen theme. If the problem goes away, enable them one by one to identify the source of the problem.

If anyone knows of known issues with the plugins, then let me know.

In the meantime, I’ll slog through building it back up from the ground up and see what happens.

Thanks!
Andrew

You mentioned that this is intermittent. Does that mean that the CPU usage may or may not spike when you are editing a post?

One other possibility to consider is WP Cron. You may want to check if the CPU spike corresponds to the WP Cron.

You can try to ask your hosting provider about the CPU spikes. They have access to the server log files for more information.

Thanks,
Andrew

You may be under an attack of some sort. Blocking access to WP-Admin and XMLRPC may help. Putting your website behind CloudFlare should also help.

My hosting plan limits my server usage to 50% of the CPU.

lsphp:ome/pickleb1/pickleballjourney.com/xmlrpc.php 12%
lsphp:ome/pickleb1/pickleballjourney.com/xmlrpc.php 21%
lsphp:me/pickleb1/pickleballjourney.com/wp-cron.php N/A
lsphp:ome/pickleb1/pickleballjourney.com/xmlrpc.php 21%

I don’t know if those are concurrent processes or not, the cPanel report isn’t super obvious, but if concurrent, then they total to 54% which would cause the fault.

I wouldn’t think it’s an attack, the site has only been up a week, but dunno.

I use my WP phone app to upload photos to media. If I turn off XMLRPC, would that prevent mobile uploading?

As far as blocking access to WP-Admin, is this good advice here?
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/11-vital-tips-and-hacks-to-protect-your-wordpress-admin-area/
Or would you recommend a different article?

Thanks!
Andrew

Yes, turn off XMLRPC will prevent WP phone app mobile uploading.

Alternatively, you can try to use a security plugin that allows certain XMLRPC access. Ninjafirewall can block XMLRPC “system.multicall” method which often used in brute force attack while allowing app access.