I may have to give up on WordPress

Over the last two weeks I have had terrible trouble keeping my weblog up and running because (reportedly) my cpu usage has skyrocketed. I have worked with my hosting service (hostican), followed their suggestions without improvement and find they are no longer responsive. I have left messages asking for mediation between myself and hostican, because the problem might have something to do with server configuration, but nobody seems willing to discuss that possibility.

I have searched and read and searched and read and implemented every suggestion I came across, from supercache to limiting the number of posts on my front page to two.
I’ve dumped every excess plugin, all traces of ajax, turned on caching of every possible kind. No smileys (never have had them).

I gave up MT for WP less than a year ago and at first everything was fine. I did spend a lot of time and money getting things customized, but I considered that a reasonable business expense. then two weeks ago this cpu trouble started and I feel as though I’ve run into a brick wall. Sometimes it’s very quiet and then suddenly anything at all will trip it off. Fixing a typo, for example.

There’s a lot more to this, but I’m trying to keep the details down to the absolutely necessary.

I half wondered if maybe I should change service providers (not a small task and one to be avoided if at all possible) but I wouldn’t take such a drastic step unless I knew the problem would be solved, and I can’t know that, because the underlying cause is still unclear. It may be the host, or wp or some combination thereof, or something else I’m not aware of.

So at this point I’m looking at weblog software other than wordpress. I like to support open source wherever I can, but it has to actually work. I don’t mind paying for support — I have put out over a thousand dollars in the past year — but I do expect some return on my investment.

If anyone has any suggestions I would be glad to hear them, and thankful for the help.