Help needed with high resource usage

  • Hello

    I apologise for the long post but I am trying to supply as much info as possible.

    Can anyone give me any advice or help on how to resolve a problem I keep having with my ‘Resource Usage’? I am getting ‘spikes’ in usage from time to time (since 20 March) and have been trying to resolve this with the tech support team at HostPapa.

    Although tech support have been helpful offering suggestions I have been dealing with about 9 different people on the same ticket and a lot of the advice is repeated.

    My account manager has been threatening to suspend my account since 20th March and to make matters worse I have just received another email from my ‘account manager’ stating that as I have not resolved this, MY ACCOUNT WILL BE SUSPENDED from Wednesday.

    I have no (or very little) technical knowledge, so I have no understanding of the log info supplied by HostPapa – I really need help and am reaching out to the WP community to see if anyone can help me resolve this.

    My site is a new site and I haven’t really publicised it yet so I would not be expecting many visits to the site yet

    This is the advice from HostPapa on 21 March that I have followed so far:

    I’d suggest you to start auditing your site, by auditing I am referring to removing any non-critical plugin that’s not vital for your site to function.

    There are a lot of requests to wp-cron.php. Please replace your WordPress cron with a real cronjob by following our guide here:

    https://hostpapasupport.com/replace-wordpress-cron-real-cronjob/

    There are many requests to admin-ajax.php which means you’re being affected by the WordPress Heartbeat API. Please modify it by following our guide

    https://hostpapasupport.com/wordpress-heartbeat-configure/

    Optimize your databases with PhpMyAdmin:

    https://hostpapasupport.com/how-to-optimize-your-database-with-phpmyadmin/

    Lastly, enable Cloudflare. In cPanel click on CloudFlare, and enable it on all your sites. This will make your site load faster, it will save your I/O, and even protect your sites from some hacking systems.

    I still continued to receive CPU faults?(see https://snipboard.io/HfOw1g.jpg)?– here is the info received from HostPapa on 31 March

    Faults:

    * CPU: 1

    Processes:

    +——–+————-+———+—————————————————-+

    | PID | Memory (Mb) | CPU (%) | CMD |

    +——–+————-+———+—————————————————-+

    | 652300 | 42 | N/A | lsphp:e/jillt598/HappyHeartArtwork.store/index.php |

    | 652258 | 49 | N/A | lsphp:pyHeartArtwork.store/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php |

    | 652223 | 49 | N/A | lsphp:98/HappyHeartArtwork.store/wp-admin/edit.php |

    | 652217 | 50 | N/A | lsphp:pyHeartArtwork.store/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php |

    | 651761 | 55 | N/A | lsphp:e/jillt598/HappyHeartArtwork.store/index.php |

    +——–+————-+———+—————————————————-+

    You already installed Heartbeat Control and what we can do is to change its settings further: You can select “Disable Heartbeat” on both the “WordPress Dashboard” and “Frontend” section but leave the “Post editor” as is. This should help curb the faults even further.

    I have kept checking my resource usage in cPanel, Then on 3 April I received the following message:

    “You have reached the entry processes (the number of simultaneously running php and cgi
    scripts, as well as cron jobs and shell sessions) limit 17 times”

    (see https://snipboard.io/zs6KSl.jpg)

    On 1 April There were TWO ‘spikes’ in usage at 5:02AM and 5:02PM?(see https://snipboard.io/9I84dF.jpg)?and on 3 April there was a CPU fault?(see https://snipboard.io/jBcmvp.jpg)

    I wasn’t logged into my WordPress site at any time on these days?

    On the 9 April I am still getting ‘spikes’ in usage?(see?https://snipboard.io/t6jqFS.jpg?and https://snipboard.io/LcE4vY.jpg)?and asked HostPapa if they could see what was still causing the problems and this was their response – unfortunately I really don’t understand the logs or what they mean.

    “I would like to inform you that I have made a resource usage audit for your cPanel account for last 2 days and I see a few resource usage faults there. I provide you part of the report below:”

    === General Stats ================================

    From 7 April 2023

    To 8 April 2023

    Period 2 Days

    Total Hits 13650

    Avg Hits/Day 6825

    Avg Hits/Month 207594

    Entry Proc Faults 0

    Number Proc Faults 0

    Virtual Mem Faults 0

    Physical Mem Faults 0

    CPU Faults 5

    IO Faults 0

    === CloudLinux Faults ============================

    +————-+————-+—–+——–+——-+——-+——+—–+

    | From | To | EPf | NprocF | VMemF | PMemF | CPUf | IOf |

    +————-+————-+—–+——–+——-+——-+——+—–+

    | 04-07 17:51 | 04-08 17:51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

    | 04-08 17:51 | 04-09 17:51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |

    +————-+————-+—–+——–+——-+——-+——+—–+

    They were caused by these processes:

    === CloudLinux Snapshot Top Processes ============

    7 lsphp:e/jillt598/HappyHeartArtwork.store/index.php

    So you need to review and fix this case with your site.

    As I can see you have a lot of visits from the following IP:

    — Top IPs —

    3256 46.101.77.196

    2922 49.189.39.32 (NOTE: this is my IP)

    2903 178.62.71.222

    2827 178.62.81.205

    I advise you to review the mentioned IPs and block them if you think that they could abuse your website connection.

    Another suggestion I have just received from HostPapa is:

    “You currently have wp-optimize plugin installed which handles the caching on your website. However, it may seem that it does not have the object caching option. 

    If you would like to use object cache, you can replace the wp-optimize plugin with W3 Total Cache as it does provide object caching function.”

    I have attached a screenshot showing the plugins I am using (see https://snipboard.io/Vq6mPB.jpg)

    Thank you for reading this. I am a new business just trying to set up my first website, I really need this resolving or advice on how to stop these faults occurring, I cannot risk my new website being suspended. I appreciate any help or suggestions.

    I am happy to supply any further (or logs) info if required, but may need guidance how to access logs.

    Regards Jilly

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 16 through 22 (of 22 total)
  • Thread Starter jilly123

    (@jilly123)

    @bcworkz

    GENIUS!! I will try throttling in Chrome, this might give me a bit of breathing space whilst I find a suitable plan – thanks too for the instructions.

    I’m fully prepared for ‘suspension’ now – I’ve got copies and full backups of what I need, plus I’m working offline with local by flywheel (another learning curve!) as I think this will be easier and quicker to upload my WordPress site when I sort out a plan – I originally set my site up using Xampp and had a few dramas uploading my database.

    Thanks also for the heads up about bad bots ignoring the robots file, I’ve added ‘PetalBot’ to my htaccess and will research other bad bots to add too.

    Once again thank you so much – your help and advice has been outstanding ??

    Cheers – Jilly

    Hi,

    Not sure what is happening at hostpapa but i don’t have a good feeling about it. i keep getting these resource issues as well on 5 sites. One has been online but sort of dormant with 1 visitor per month and they keep sending these email as well for that site.

    I think it’s either a scam to upsell or non stop attacks to all these sites.

    I also have a few sites at dnsexit for 3 years and never ever had an email about resource usage.

    It’s very problematic as i have a customer who gets about 50-80 visitors to his site per day and they’re threatening to shut him down as well nonstop. Nothing special, just a site with a few pictures on it.

    Zero help from hostpapa but tips on cron jobs and heartbeat.. Very frustrating.

    Thread Starter jilly123

    (@jilly123)

    @mikkie07 It’s frustrating, HP tech team respond quickly but always a different person that suggests the same things as other (like you say heartbeat, cronjob etc), I just wish they would read the whole conversation! I have had HostPapa account manager knocking on my door for the past 6 weeks, threatening a suspension and pushing an upgrade. My site has been live for about 9 months without any issues – minimal ‘genuine traffic’ so I don’t know why the ‘high resource usage’?

    The only thing I can think I’ve done any different is connected to Google Analytics and subscribed to UberSuggest.

    @bcworkz has put some really great helpful tips, suggestions and advice in this post. I’m currently working offline whist I research other plans.

    It’s all very strange!

    Very frustrating and like i said. I have one website that has been online for 3 years but haven’t done anything with it with 1 visitor per month. That site also gets threatened because of high usage…

    I had one that was sitting under construction for a month and never logged in to it that also got high usage and another one with 50 visitors per day that got threatened.

    I’m building one right now where i think it will have a few 100 visitors per day so not sure if i even want to stay with hostpapa.

    Thread Starter jilly123

    (@jilly123)

    @bcworkz

    Following up from your earlier comment:

    It seems the issue is occasional excessive I/O usage, so upgrading with HostPapa’s shared or WP plans wouldn’t help, all plans apparently have the same limit. On other host’s websites, it’s often difficult to find out what their plan’s I/O limits are.?

    I contacted HostPapa and asked a couple of questions based on the above – I just wondered what your thoughts are on this?

    My Question to HostPapa

    Could you advise what the max I/O limit is on the Ultra Plan?

    ALSO can you let me know what my max usage has been when I have been hitting the resource limits as I need to know if this plan will be suitable or if I will still encounter the same issues?

    Their Reply

    What we measure is how many times the limit in question has been exceeded and I/O has not been the limit exceeded the most by your account with only a couple of times so you’ll be okay with I/O

    The limit exceeded the most is Entry Points with over 100 faults in a 24-hour period. You currently get 20 Entry Points and our Ultra Plan offers 80 Entry Points and for this usage, we can see that it will suffice.

    I’m not sure what this means? Doesn’t this mean that I would still exceed my limit even if I upgrade to Ultra?

    Confused.com!! Thanks for any advice you might have

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    TBH I’m not sure what they mean by entry points. I’m guessing (wildly) it’s related to HTTP/TCP connections. A typical browser might use 2-6 concurrent connections. If I’m right then you currently cannot in theory have more than 3-10 simultaneous users. But most requests get filled very quickly, so connections are constantly being freed up, in practice allowing for more users at one time.

    Whether I’m right or wrong, the fact remains there are an entire slew of different server limitations imposed by a host. Which limitation you might violate is highly variable depending on the nature of your website and how busy it is in any given time frame. If only one limitation is increased, you could very possibly then run up against a different limitation. Typically various plans incrementally and proportionally increase most of the limitations together, giving you more overall performance with each step.

    80 entry points is certainly better than 20. It seems their Ultra plan also has a greater I/O allowance. When I said upgrading wouldn’t help, it was based on the initial side by side comparison you posted early on. All 3 of those had the same I/O limits, but apparently Ultra wasn’t part of the comparison.

    The entire hosting scheme of offering very limited plans which we’re likely to exceed seems like bait and switch tactics. In some cases it probably is, but in host’s defense, there likely are many users who can get by with a very limited plan. Static, personal vanity sites for example. Those with such a site shouldn’t need to pay for a more powerful business oriented site they don’t need. Naturally, everyone wants to get by with the most affordable plan they can. Doing so increases the likelihood limitations will be reached and an upgrade becomes necessary.

    The bottom line is your current plan is apparently inadequate and you need something more robust, whether it’s through Host Papa or someone else. How much more robust I cannot say.

    Thread Starter jilly123

    (@jilly123)

    @bcworkz

    Thanks for your quick response, I value your opinion and take on board what you have said, I will do more research with other companies too before I commit to anything.

    Thanks again

Viewing 7 replies - 16 through 22 (of 22 total)
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