I’ve been having problems with my blog recently. If you’ve visited and tried to access JaypeeOnline the past few days, it’s most likely that you experienced some problems viewing the blog. Unlike previous events where the downtime were due to my hosting provider’s incompetence, blog migration or a WordPress plugin conflict, this time the problems were caused by a high volume of traffic. Like many bloggers, I work on increasing my blog traffic and here I am, having problems because of it. Ironic isn’t it?
Because of the efforts and a little bit of SEO work that I put on my blog, the volume of traffic jumped in the last few months and went from double to triple the amount of traffic I had in the first few months of last year. The last couple of months didn’t show any signs of slowing down and the volume of traffic has just kept increasing. It got to the point where my blog is using up more resources and running out of the alloted memory. I’m not complaining at all but I didn’t expect that it would cause me these problems. Btw, having WP Super Cache installed on my blog didn’t help or was not enough to handle the situation.
Anyways, I’ve been busy working on this issues the past few days trying to figure out what’s causing the problem, what I could do to fix it and trying to find alternative solutions. I also contacted my hosting provider and asked for some help. I’m very fortunate to have a very good hosting provider – ServInt, who’ve been very helpful and have provided all the assistance I needed the past few days. Right now, my blog is on a 7-day trial upgrade to a higher VPS account with double the amount of resources. I’m also running a new WordPress caching plugin which is supposedly better than WP Super Cache and is used by a lot of big-time, high-traffic blogs like mashable.com, noupe.com, webdesignerdepot.com, freelanceswitch.com and tutsplus.com just to mention a few. I’m still working on it and will have to fix some of the settings to maximize the caching plugin capabilities and optimize blog performance.
Although I’ve been able to address the issues and have been able to minimize the server load, it’s still a work in progress. Me and my hosting provider will continue to monitor the performance of JaypeeOnline and try to make it work better. If you experience any problems or notice some errors on the blog or any part of the blog, please do notify me via the contact page or send me an email at jphabaradas [at] gmail [dot] com.
I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during the past few days and I hope that you won’t get tired of supporting JaypeeOnline. Thank you and hope you all have a nice day!
Hi jaypee,
Thanks for the post. Although I wanted to use wordpress because its really a nice blogging platform. My main concern is bandwidth and memory allocation as you have stated here. I hope you can have a summary of which is better and more economical on a wannabee blogger.
it’s great that you managed to fix it jaypee. Looks like its working. That load of your page is fast at my end.
Have you tried tweaking WP-cache’s Expiry Time & Garbage Collection. Try setting it to around 5 or 10 hours and see how it helps. Also, do take note of the number of plugins you’re using :(
Known VPS RAM eater are an unoptimized apache and mysql configs. Check with your host so they can tinker with these configs to see which configuration/settings will work for your blog. Hope that helps.
On a site note: a fellow Pinoy is also experiencing trouble with ServInt due to CPU usage this time. :( Hmm….
I guess you’re trying out W3 total cache. Tell us din on how efficient it will be. My nursing site is still on media temple dv with 3gb ram and still having issues.
@Jhay – It’s all good. I was gonna ask you to see if you can access my blog and tell me if it loads slow or fast.
Lately, I’ve seen a huge increase in traffic and like what I said in the post, its tripled in the last couple of months. I’ve also heard about the Cuil bot a while back and I’ve blocked it via robots.txt and .htaccess.
What my hosting provider is telling me, the problem is with the page loads are exceeding my CPU limits. I have to figure out the culprit, what’s causing it. Wish me luck! Hehe
Sorry I wasn’t able to get back to you right away. I was out of the house and I had left my GTalk signed in.
Anyways, was it a traffic spike? Or an organic growth in bandwidth?
I’ve heard that the Cuil bot can wreak havoc on your bandwidth so it could be the culprit. That’s why it’s wise to block the bot via .htaccess
On the other hand, if it’s an organic growth in bandwidth, then your server logs would clearly indicate it, which would justify the upgrade in hosting plan. If not, then something fishy is going on.
@markku — I’m still using Apache and MySQL on my server now. I just sent you an email. Thanks for your offer! I really hope you can help me with this. :)
Were you using Apache in your last server setup? More often than not, it’s the culprit when it comes to excessive RAM usage, along with MySQL. Shoot me an email, I might be able to help you with the technical details of your setup. =)
ask lng, sir gaano karami ng bandwidth or monthly traffic ang purchase nyo with this site???kc mejo nga nag kacrash minsan,..and are you really paying 49 dollars monthly pra sa VPS hosting nyo sa ServInt???
kindly reply kc balak ko n din mag up ng website sooner,..napili ko ung 2gbhosting.com kc 11.88 dollars lang ang hosting for 2gb space and 110gb traffic wla p domain yan,..
I am being passionate to provide blog news,..html, css, my sql, php and javascript tutorials someday,..kaya need ko advice from pioneers like you!
by the way thanks,..
@Moses – I have the Enterprise VPS account on ServInt with 1TB of monthly bandwidth and yes I pay $49/month for it. I believe the problem I’m having here is not bandwidth but running out of alloted memory (768 MB Guaranteed RAM and 1.5 GB Burst RAM).
When choosing a hosting provider make sure you do a lot of research and read user reviews.
Based on the specs you provided, 1&1 has better offers. For $4/month, you get 1 domain, 10GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth. For $7/month you get 2 domains, 150GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth. I host other Pinoy blogs on 1&1, I can recommend them because so far I haven’t had any problems with them.
You might also wanna check out WP Webhost. I haven’t tried them but several of my blogging friends are with them and from what I’ve heard from my friends, WP Webhost is a good and reliable web host especially for WordPress blogs. WP Webhost offers 50GB disk space and 500GB bandwidth for $8/month. You can use my coupon code – JAYPEE30 to get a 30% discount.
Hope you find a web host that’s right for you and your blog. You’re welcome!