Server Overload (Shared Hosting) Since Upgrade to 3.6.1

Can you replicate the problems using the default Twenty Thirteen theme with all plugins deactivated?

ALL plugins? My sites would be a horrible mess if I changed the theme and didn’t put the site into maintenance mode!

So far I’ve only been getting information from tech support once a day so that would be a twenty-four hour mess. :-/ Would it be worth trying with all plugins deactivated except Maintenance Mode? I would like hourly stats but I don’t know if I can get them. Is there any external way or inside WordPress way to monitor a site’s consumption of CPU resources or do I have to rely on my host’s tech support?

My sites would be a horrible mess if I changed the theme and didn’t put the site into maintenance mode!

Welcome to the world of site troubleshooting.

There is no magic bullet in these situations. This is just the start of basic troubleshooting and is a process of elimination deliberately designed to locate the root cause as quickly as possible by first removing the most obvious and common culprits via a series of (often) temporary steps.

Do you want to locate and, hopefully, fix the problem on your site? If “yes”, then please help us to help you and carry out the changes that we suggest.

Your theme & plugin settings are saved in your database and should be retained for future use.

that would be a twenty-four hour mess

Actually it may only take 10 minutes…

Actually it may only take 10 minutes…

How so? What information could I get in only 10 minutes?

I am very willing to try this if it will do any good. However, I need some way of getting information about server usage for that to happen. That’s why I asked if there was any other way I could get that information (besides my hosting company). I could just deactivate the plugins and switch the theme but I don’t yet have any way to know if that measure changed anything. Do you see what I mean? :-/

What information could I get in only 10 minutes?

You should be able to determine if a “vanilla version” of your site consumed the same level of resources. Can you not do this via your hosting managment panel?

A far as I am aware, there is no plugin that monitors server usage and frankly, I’d guess that the last thing you need right now is another plugin anyway.

Can you not do this via your hosting managment panel?

I don’t know. I did look for something like that but didn’t find anything. I will look again.

You can disable all plugins and use default theme for a single page view (so it won’t effect your users) by using the Safe Mode plugin.

@esmi is right. The first level of WordPress debugging/troubleshooting almost always starts with disabling all plugins (which can be done by simply renaming the plugins directory temporarily). But Safe Mode may make it easier for you without effecting your site for normal users.

Go to your cPanel (if you have one) at the server and look for Bandwidth and CPU Throttling reports or graphs or whatever might be there. I have been watching those every few hours over these past couple of weeks while dealing with the same kinds of issues you are experiencing. I have three small sites and my account was being throttled part of the time while I was there working on them.

Next, find the File Manager there at your cPanel and look in a temp folder or wherever for my_slow_sql. Your host can help you find that, if necessary. In my own case, cleaning some leftover plugin stuff from my databases has made a very-noticeble difference. You can likely find that file via FTP, but the File Manager at your cPanel might make it more comprehensible. As to plugins and such, deactivate one-at-a-time for a couple of hours the ones you suspect might be making a heavy demand on the server, and let the Bandwidth and Throttling reports possibly give you some indications there.

Here are two plugins I find helpful, but you make your own call there:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search.php?q=WP+Clean+Up
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search.php?q=WP-DBManager

I found something called “transfer log” but it doesn’t tell me what I need to know unless I’m missing something. Here’s a sample entry:
207.46.13.99 – – [04/Nov/2011:00:30:30 -0400] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1” 200 342 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +https://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)” virtuousweddings.com virtuousweddings.com

Traffic details . . . . Not helpful.

Disk usage for the month. . . . .

Something under phpMyAdmin with loads of information. Runtime Information ~ Server, Query Statistics, All Status Variables, Monitor . . . . Is this relevant? None of it makes sense to me yet but if it’s what I’m looking for I will make it make sense.

Must take a break before trying anything further. Thank you for your help!

I haven’t been able to find anything but have now specifically asked tech support if there are any logs or reports we can view.

The answer: cannot access any such reports.

So, all I have is a day-by-day account of the total load for our entire account.

The tech guy did direct me to log files where I can see “from what IP addresses most of connections were made and if there are any bots attacking your sites.”

I’m still trying to interpret them. My own IP address is by far the one with the most connections. When an entry says “GET” what does it mean? What is happening? It looks like when someone is actually looking at the website there will be a single entry for each post or category they look at. With other IP addresses (including my own), however, there are long lines of “GET” entries–several per second.

I am in a chat window with someone at your server at the moment to see what the deal is with logs and such…

This is likely the same as you were told:

: I am sorry, but this information [such as server log and slow-query log] is unavailable on HSpeher control panel, which is installed on our shared hosting.
me: How about database access?
me: …any kind of cPanel?
me: phpMyAdmin?
: Sure, as mentioned…HSphere with phpMyAdmin built in it.
: cPanel is installed only on VPS and Cloud hosting plans.
: We are planning to move Shared hosting to cPanel too, but unfortunately I am unable to provide exact date.
: unfortunately phpMyAdmin on Shared hosting is little limited.
me: Understood, and I thank you very much for your time!
: You are welcome.

Then, I also found this:

H-Sphere (like cPanel, but unlike Plesk) provides online file source editing, however with H-Sphere only allows editing of .txt or .html files and without line numbers in edit mode, thus limiting PHP and other script editing possibilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-Sphere

If I were in your situation, and saying this from my limited experience gained over these past few days, I would ask your host to send you a copy of your slow-queries log so you will be able to know what cleaning needs to be done in your database. At least in my own case, that has made a huge difference over these past few days since at least some deactivated-and-deleted plugins leave stuff behind that drags everything down.

Thank you for your help and suggestions!

I’ve been looking at the log files again. I noticed a lot of activity by one IP address all connected with some blog post so I looked at that blog post myself and then reloaded the log file. Sure enough, it did the same thing. About 30 connections from my IP address associated with loading one page. No wonder I’m overloading the server!

About 30 connections from my IP address associated with loading one page.

I had exactly the same thing going on about a month and during a brute-force attack I stopped by changing the wp-admin folder permissions to 0000…and then I had to quickly stop the BlueHost Support Tech from blocking my own IP since he was still seeing so many hits from there that he thought I was yet another attacker!