Probable cause of site downtime, 503s. Just mentioning.

I have no proof of this claim, save two months of working with my host, trying every trick in the book to keep my site from going down on 503s, and only disabling Relevanssi this morning resolved the problems. My hope is that, by sharing this information here, Mikko and folks can keep an eye out for people with similar issues.

I’m really bummed by this, as the default WP search really stinks and I loved the way Relevanssi worked. Was not expecting it be the problem at all.

Symptoms/Test Case
1. WP 3.5.2 running either Pagelines Platform OR Frank theme, with common, proven plugins alongside – Akismet, Disqus, WP Super Cache, Contact Form 7, BJ Lazy Load, NextGEN Gallery
2. Attempting to preview draft post resulted in hung browser. At least 80% of the time, this would throw 324 – Server closed connection without sending data – errors. Further attempts to do anything from wp-admin/post.php would result in extended 503 downtime.

What we tried to resolve it:
– rebooted Apache service multiple times
– migrated to different Apache instances
– removed overhead in the DB
– changed from Pagelines Platform to Frank theme (lighter, responsive)
– implemented tweaks to mod_security via .htaccess
– disabled mod_security altogether
– switched back to ‘twentytwelve’ theme (again)
– disabled all plugins (again), reactivating and re-testing, 1-by-1

At this point, the only plugin left to reactivate is Relevanssi and both the 324s and 503 downtime issues are 100% gone. After fighting this for over two months, and with a major project going live this weekend, I can’t afford to risk it, but neither I nor my host can see any other possible causes.

Again, I don’t mean this to be some kind of scathing indictment or warning to others. Just wanted to mention it just in case it might help someone in the future. WordPress is popular as it is because there are countless ways to customize and configure it. No plugin architect can ensure 100% compatibility in such a mix-and-match universe.

I chalk this one up to plugin/theme conflict, which is NOT an issue with Relevanssi. Wish I had more technical data.

Thanks for a great plugin. Best of luck.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/relevanssi/