Need help figuring out what is killing my WordPress site

  • My website has been disabled on my host due to over use of the server resources. It’s a cPanel type hosted site and it’s using more resources than they allow. The problem is I’m having a heck of a time figuring out what is causing the problem. I’ve gone through the WordPress optimization guides, but it’s still not enough.

    This is what the hosting company came back to me with when trying to work with them to figure out what is going on and what I can do to help.

    Considering the stats for the account, I wouldn’t say that you are being accessed by a lot of visitors, however it appears that the number of times that your application is being hit causes a slow script to be executed on the account :

    4222 https://aftercredits.com/index.php /home/aftercre/public_html/index.php
1236 https://aftercredits.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php /home/aftercre/public_html/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
16 https://aftercredits.com/wp-cron.php /home/aftercre/public_html/wp-cron.php
15 https://aftercredits.com/wp-login.php /home/aftercre/public_html/wp-login.php
13 https://aftercredits.com/xmlrpc.php /home/aftercre/public_html/xmlrpc.php
3 https://aftercredits.com/wp-admin/index.php /home/aftercre/public_html/wp-admin/index.php

    Regrettably since the CPU seconds usage is not recorded on the executions of each script, we cannot be very specific on which script (whether a plugin or the theme) is causing the extensive usage of CPU seconds.

    Any ideas on what I can do? If I can’t figure this out, then it’s time to hire someone to look into this, but I’m broke and the site doesn’t make money, so I’d like to try and avoid that if possible.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Hello,

    You might want to install a plugin like P3 to see if any particular plugin is causing this, as well as Query Monitor which will give you a nice breakdown of what’s slowing down the site (usually that’s whats eating up your CPU cycles as well).

    If you have many posts you might want to consider installing a caching plugin and enabling database/object caching as well.

    Also, does your error_log show anything weird? Does your cPanel have a “Select PHP Version” icon where you can select a newer PHP version (ie v5.6) and enable the opcache extension?

    Thread Starter ned4spd8874

    (@ned4spd8874)

    Thanks @georgetasioulis!

    I have used P3 to trim some “fat” and also lean up Jetpack as I had a bunch of modules enabled that I didn’t end up using.

    I’ll check out the Query Monitor, it sounds helpful.

    I use WP Super Cache.

    Haven’t looked at the error_log recently. If it’s the same file I’m thinking of, the last time I looked at it, I got confused!

    I’m running PHP version 5.6.17. I was able to enable opcache via a php.ini file.

    Apparently I have PHP 7.0.2 avaliable to me which they say has opcache enabled by default. Not sure if I want to upgrade to that version though, I’m always afraid that something terrible will happen when I do!

    If you’re not running any weird/old plugins, then switching to PHP 7.x will give you a significant speed boost!
    If it’s just a matter of selecting the PHP version from a dropdown list in your cPanel, then go for it – if it breaks your site you can always switch back to 5.6 ??

    I’ve been using PHP v7.x in production since the stable branch was released back in December and have experienced no issues at all, even on high-traffic WordPress sites, with custom coded themes and plugins.

    Unless you’re running any really old plugins, you should be safe. Of course, make sure it’s easy to revert back to 5.6 just in case.

    Thread Starter ned4spd8874

    (@ned4spd8874)

    I’ll have to try that tomorrow then. It looks like it’s simple enough to switch between them. I just thought maybe some irreversible changes happen in the background once I switch.

    Thread Starter ned4spd8874

    (@ned4spd8874)

    Well, I thought I had things working better, but it seems maybe not now. Looking at the stats tonight, I’m getting into the red zone. I get the most visitors Friday and Saturday. Next weekend will definitely kill the site with Deadpool coming out. Is there anything else anyone can think of to help? It’s coming down to getting more expensive hosting (which I cannot afford) or finding a better, less resource intensive theme.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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