WP Memory Issues

2GB or RAM is very small for a hosting server, so I’d look at increasing that for a start. That will definately be cheaper than creating a new VPS for each site.

Just for a bit of a comparison, most of the sites that we run are on shared hosting servers. These dow have a bit more grunt than your VPS, but so far the best we’ve got is one of our reseller accounts that has 18 WordPress sites, one Magento site (with 6 separate stores) and one custom business application. All of these work together fine, and we don’t have any issues with RAM or CPU. Of course VPS’s are less powerful, but unless your 4 sites are getting some pretty serious traffic, a decent VPS with a reasonabl eamount of RAM should be able to handle them fine.

Thanks for feedback. Any ideas on how much memory I should be ask client to purchase. Client wants 5 woocommerce sites on this VPS server eventually and I have heard best to have a dedicated server for each woocommerce installation which can get pricey. 600 a month from WP Engine anyways.

Here is a link to the 4 sites at present.

Site 1

Basically the sites are almost identical. I ran a the P3 Plugin Profiler and the plugins were taking up to 76% of memory in some cases.

I have about 30 – 35 plugins installed on each site so I am going thro and removing anything that is un needed based on advice from this handy post. The WP https plugin consumes 25% of plugin memory which there doesn’t seemt to be a fix for other than increasing memory.

I have also compressed all images and am using both Cloudflare and Max CDN for improved performance. I am getting a developer to install new relic for all sites which should hopefully make things clearer as well.

VPS seems like can be purchased fairly cheaply these days. It would cost less than the amount for me adding additional RAM. I managed to locate a host with a managed Digital Ocean account for 20US a mth.

Any ideas on how much memory I should be ask client to purchase.

There’s no way that we could tell you that. There’s just too many variables that need to be taken into consideration. Everything form plugins, theme, visitors, CPU, disk space, etc all play a part. The only way to really know is to add some and see if it’s enough, and if it’s not add more. But that also might only last until trafifc on the sites increase, so it’s never a permanant fix.

Client wants 5 woocommerce sites on this VPS server eventually and I have heard best to have a dedicated server for each which can get pricey.

That all depends on how much eash site is making for them. ?? If a site is making $5 a month, then a VPS or dedicated sever is not a great investment, but if it’s making $10,000 a month… things aver very different.

VPS seems like can be purchased fairly cheaply these days. It would cost less than the amount for me adding additional RAM.

I’m a little shocked by this. So, adding another 2GB of RAM to a VPS that already has 2GB would cost more than creating another new VPS with 2GB of RAM? If that is really the case then sure, look at separate VPS’s for each site as it’s cheaper, and may result in better overall performance.

Ok yes I might do a bit of both.

Firstly optimise site and clean out DB as best I can then move sites onto their own VPS. It could well be a single plugin affecting all 4 installations so the new relic monitoring will come in handy.

There is a VPS plan I was going to get for $20 US with following specs
1GBMemory
1 CoreProcessor
30GBSSD Disk
2TBTransfer.

So I could get 2 – 3 of these accounts for cheaper than me adding 2GB of ram to existing hosting set up.

That’s not too bad, but you might notice that the sits slow down (1 core vs. 5), and that 1GB or RAM might not be enough if your sites are maxing out 2GB now.

RAM isn’t used in a continuous block. The RAM is used on each page view, which should be fractions of a second, so when the RAM is used for that request it’s released back into the pool so that it can be used ofr the next page view. If your sites are getting enough page views on your 5 sitesto max out 2GB, then there’s a chance that a single site will hit 1GB easily if it’s the one that’s getting the most page views.

I’d suggest trying one account for a start, and monitor it for a month or so to see if it can handle the load. if it can, move the other sites as well, and if it can’t you’ll know to look for a solution with better resource allowances.

Yes that’s good advice. At the moment before anything happens the site is using up 1.1GB of memory before any traffic so there is only 900mb to share for all for 4 sites.

So having I think if I get a single site with a 1GB on a new server minus cpanel etc that should be more efficient.

I had a look at the support ticket from host I receieved from host and they said site had too many httpd requests which could be either a DOS attack or apache config issue from my limited research.

I thought an account (albeit free) with cloudflare would have kept me relatively safe from DOS attacks. But have also notified host and hopefully can fix this all soon.