Slow blog load times

Hi,

I’m hoping someone can help me out on this. On my own server that I run in my own home [Windows Server 2003 Enterprise with Apache 2.0.59/PHP 5.1.5/MySQL 5.0.45] I run about 3 WordPress blogs. One is my own, and two are client blogs. When I was on vacation about a month ago, I had a client call me and tell me that he was having page load issues with his blog. He said that when he went to the blog directory on his domain that I host, page load times were in excess of 15 seconds. I checked my blog, along with the other one I host, and they also had the same issue. I checked to make sure it wasn’t a MySQL issue, and restarted the system service for Apache and MySQL just in case, but that didn’t help. After pulling my hair out for about 5 hours because I couldn’t even access the wp-admin interface because of the slowness, I decided to just export my WordPress file from the wp-admin panel, backup everything in the /blog/ directory of my blog and my other clients blogs, drop the schema’s in MySQL, and start over.

I downloaded the latest version of WordPress, which was 2.3 at the time, (I was running 2.2 version when the problem began). I copied all the new files into my /blog/ directories and did a fresh install. Then I imported my WordPress export files for my blog and my clients blogs after recreating the scemas in MySQL, and everything was zippy again. I thought the problem was over. However, now a month later, the exact same thing happened again. I decided that it was time for a design update on my blog so downloaded a new theme. I did some edits, added a few things to jazz it up, and everything was fine. However, I noticed I had a few old worthless posts that I needed to get rid of, so I deleted them from the “Manage” tab. That’s when things went nuts. Slowness for the 3 blogs started again. I tried checking the Apache and MySQL error logs, and nothing showed up. So I just went ahead and backed everything up again like I did before, downloaded 2.3.1, and then restored everything this early morning at 3AM. Now, everything works fine. However, I want to find the root of this matter so I’m not stuck uninstalling my blog and reinstalling it every month or so.

Any advice on this matter would be appreciated. Thanks.

-Drew