[Solved] Suspended: schase56

[schase]

Without any warning, I've received a suspended account notice.

• username: schase56
• server: I think it's tommy
• main domain: schase.heliohost.org

​I suspect this may be due to high server load, as I'm running two low traffic websites, one of which is a Wordpress test/development site (schase.heliohost.org/wp) for a live site hosted by another ISP. The second site is just plain HTML/CSS.

• If the Wordpress site is indeed the culprit, I would appreciate some more information on why this is the case, advice on any steps I could take to reduce the load to an acceptable level, and how I can monitor this?
• If there's no way to fix the Wordpress site, I would like to archive the Wordpress site and remove it, but keeping intact the other content in my account (including the non-Wordpress site schase.heliohost.org).
• If the problem is something else, please advise.

I would at least like to get the non-Wordpress site back up and running ASAP.  

 

[wolstech]

Your account was suspended because Wordpress is causing too much load. I have unsuspended your account, but please try to limit the load you put on our servers as it slows down not only your site, but the sites of all other HelioHost users sharing your server.

 

This is really common for Wordpress. It can cause massive amounts of load even if you're hardly getting any traffic to your site. Wordpress is also incredibly insecure and very easy to hack. We see Wordpress accounts get hacked all the time and usually the hacker sets up a phishing site on your domain. We strongly recommend using any software other than Wordpress.

 

Something that might help is this simply static Wordpress plugin. It will speed up your site, reduce the load you cause, and reduce your chance of getting hacked. If you try it let us know how it worked out for you.

 

If you insist on using Wordpress you might want to consider purchasing a VPS instead. VPS hosting gives you an entire virtual server to yourself, including no load limits, a dedicated IP address, and full root access. Wordpress sites load relatively slowly on our shared hosting, but they will be much faster on a VPS.

[schase]

Thanks for restoring the account and the info. I'll need to take several days to do some experimenting to see whether I'll be able to keep the Wordpress installation (which is running both Wordfence and Jetpack) or will need to remove it. Looking at the Account Load screen in cpanel, I have no idea why there's such a variation in the CPU and memory loads.

 

So I ask for a little forebearance while I'm looking into this.

[wolstech]

Wordfence is one of the worst offenders in terms of making WP too heavy (woocommerce is probably the other bad one we see most). My first recommendation beyond just dropping WP entirely would be to uninstall wordfence.

[OnEnemy]

Wordfence is one of the worst offenders in terms of making WP too heavy (woocommerce is probably the other bad one we see most). My first recommendation beyond just dropping WP entirely would be to uninstall wordfence.

I have experimented with wp and firewalls cause the most load. Jetpack causes a ton of load too. I would highly recommend moving away from wp and trying out Sitepad instead. You can use it for free, but premium Sitepad gets you more themes and support directly from them

[schase]

An update:

 

For this particular website, using something other than Wordpress is not an option. Creating a static site using Simply Static is also not an option in this case. I also don't have the funds to pay for VPS.

 

If I'm not successful in reducing server load I will be forced to remove the Wordpress installation from Heliohost.

 

I've found Wordfence to be an essential Wordpress plugin in order to mitigate hacking.

I'm experimenting with various settings (Wordfence, Jetpack) to lessen the server load, but am having problems seeing the results.

 

I do not understand the Account Load tool (accessible from cPanel) at all: I refresh this several times a day, and see both CPU and memory load significantly increasing and decreasing over the course of a day. Are there other tools I could be using in order to get a better idea of server load?

 

Finally, with all due respect to the hardworking folk who keep Heliohost running:

If Wordpress is such a server hog and you discourage its use, why do you provide an easy route to Wordpress installation with the Softaculous Installer?

Edited November 18, 2020 by schase

[Krydos]

I do not understand the Account Load tool (accessible from cPanel) at all: I refresh this several times a day, and see both CPU and memory load significantly increasing and decreasing over the course of a day. Are there other tools I could be using in order to get a better idea of server load?

The load bars are indicators of how much load your account is doing averaged over the last day in comparison to the other accounts on the server. If it says 100 that means your account is causing more load than any of the rest of the accounts on the entire server. If someone causes a lot of load and passes you your bar will go down. If you cause more load than someone else your bar will move up.

 

If Wordpress is such a server hog and you discourage its use, why do you provide an easy route to Wordpress installation with the Softaculous Installer?

Some of the other admins want to ban Wordpress entirely, but I think some people are able to use it without issues. There are literally hundreds of wordpress installs on our servers and only maybe 1 or 2 get suspended each day.

 

HelioHost is used quite a bit by people who have no idea about webhosting, and want to try it out for free. Unfortunately Wordpress is so well known that it's literally the only thing that some of these people have ever heard of so of course they install it. As long as you're on Johnny or as long as you don't really get any visitors to your site it's not a problem, but if you're on Tommy the threshold to get suspended is much easier because we want to keep Tommy as close to 99.9% uptime as possible. On Johnny load isn't as big of a deal and we don't suspend nearly as many people so the uptime is only around 92% right now.

 

The way I see it, Wordpress is like the kid's Mattel version of a website. It's really easy, everyone has heard of it, and you play around with it and you learn a few things. Hopefully as you become more knowledgeable you're finally ready to graduate to some sort of grown up software, or better yet write your own code. I'll admit it. Even I installed wordpress like 10 years ago when I barely knew anything about webhosting. The website was online for about 3 days and I hadn't told anyone the url or anything yet and it got hacked. That's when I started asking myself, "What on earth could be so wrong with this software that it could get hacked so quickly and easily?" Here we are 10 years later and really nothing has changed.