theblindmonk

Thanks Seacoast! Yes it does appear to be my server settings and not specific to wordpress. After searching and tweaking around a bit, i think i have found a much better server configuration which releases memory once the client is not active on the website or closes the tab.

For anyone interested, my server settings under /etc/apache2/apache2.conf is as below. Essentially reduced the amount of keepalive time.

#
# Timeout: The number of seconds before receives and sends time out.
#
Timeout 40

#
# KeepAlive: Whether or not to allow persistent connections (more than
# one request per connection). Set to "Off" to deactivate.
#
KeepAlive On

#
# MaxKeepAliveRequests: The maximum number of requests to allow
# during a persistent connection. Set to 0 to allow an unlimited amount.
# We recommend you leave this number high, for maximum performance.
#
MaxKeepAliveRequests 50

#
# KeepAliveTimeout: Number of seconds to wait for the next request from the
# same client on the same connection.
#
KeepAliveTimeout 2

##
## Server-Pool Size Regulation (MPM specific)
## 

# prefork MPM
# StartServers: number of server processes to start
# MinSpareServers: minimum number of server processes which are kept spare
# MaxSpareServers: maximum number of server processes which are kept spare
# MaxClients: maximum number of server processes allowed to start
# MaxRequestsPerChild: maximum number of requests a server process serves
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          5
    MinSpareServers       3
    MaxSpareServers      5
    MaxClients           13
    MaxRequestsPerChild  1000
</IfModule>