sjmullock

If only life were that simple! I have tried asking the support people at the host provider, but I am not sure English is their first language and they definitely stop reading my questions as soon as they think one of their stock answers can be deployed. They became obsessed with the idea that my bandwidth problems were simply the result of image hotlinking (I searched with Google and could find no site doing this). It is true that the images were responsible for much of the usage, but the SSP files were a significant addition. It just wasn’t worth struggling with them for the sake of the relatively small extra outlay to increase the allowed bandwidth. However, usage of our podcasts is pretty light; it might be more serious for a more heavily visited site. Thanks for providing information.

Sorry to be slow!
So here is a fragment of the Webalizer top 10 users of bandwidth list. I have just shown the SSP lines:

# Hits KBytes URL
6 7 35622 1.91% /podcast-download/2488/podcast-38-brahms-requiem.m4a
7 7 35217 1.89% /podcast-download/2279/podcast-11-the-letter-d.m4a
9 7 28412 1.52% /podcast-download/2358/podcast-22-end-of-term.m4a

For example, the first file mentioned is about 7.8 MB. 7 hits suggests that the bandwidth would be about 55 MB. The displayed amount is 35 MB, but I guess not everyone will listen to the end.

To solve the problem for now I will upgrade the hosting to increase bandwidth. My reason to show the tedious detail is a desire to understand (and hopefully for the interest of anyone else with the same issue). It would be good to know if this is generally true for a cPanel shared hosting and SSP with default settings, but files hosted externally.

Thanks for the replies. I assumed that some sort of redirect was doing the job and it is useful to understand that this is for the purpose of generating stats. I have not installed the stats extension, so I guess I will not miss the stats – except that now I’ve been reminded they are a possibility I am tempted!

Now this may be a cPanel question: Is it expected that redirects like you describe will add to the site’s reported bandwidth? Surely the data does not pass through the site server, adding to its load, even though there is a site address associated with it?

Well just in case anyone else finds themselves here, the problem is now solved. I put in a support ticket with eUKhost and they said that the problem was with the PHP eaccelerator function. They say they disabled it and now the problem has disappeared.

The default theme is TwentyFourteen. That’s straight after the install. I was not editing the theme directly. When you first fire up the dashbboard on the first page it says:

Welcome to WordPress!

We’ve assembled some links to get you started:
Get Started
Customize Your Site

Where “Customize Your Site” is a button. This is what causes the crash. However, the same effect can be achived by selecting ‘Appearance’, ‘Themes’ and then hitting the Customize button there. Surely this is the way it was intended to be used.

The PHP version is compatble with the requirements listed for WordPress; I checked. It would be nice to have some clue as to what the problem is before trying to pester the hosting company to upgrade, or find another one. Any ideas?

OK, I guess I should have known that. I have clearly not been using WordPress long enough. I looked at the plugins page but didn’t notice the “Upgrade available” link that suddenly turned on all that useful upgrade info. Thanks for your help