Serious site slow down, Please advise. Thank you

New Member Joined: Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 11

Hello everyone,

I've been a member and fan of this site for quite sometime, although I don't usually get a chance to post very often. (hmm could have sworn I had much more posts than 1, lol database reset?)

I help run a website for a National Non-For-Profit Organization thats goal is to help comfort and encourage our wounded G.I.'s coming home from wars overseas as well as Veterans' here stateside. The Patriotic Pillow Project -> [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] and the nuke URL is [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Because it is a small organization that reaches far over 1/2 the country and into other countries, we do include hundreds of photos on our website, as well as news stories and forum posts. We have a moderate registered user base, although not too much traffic unless theres something in the paper or news here or there. Regardless, I have been noticing a massive slowdown in the sites loading times. Sometimes the pages take 2 seconds up to 15 seconds to load.

Lately within the past week or so, it seems that the site is timing out. When we pull up the site within our browsers (Fire Fox <3 ) it seems as though the site times out and then the browser attempts to download the modules.php or index.php files, depending on what URL we were following when the site decided to hiccup.

I'm primarily the only one who has knowledge and access to edit / maintain the website, and these errors have become somewhat overwhelming to diagnose, so I come to you great genius's for help!

I have my site hosted through godaddy.com which I thought would be a smart move due to strong server backbones, because we're expecting heavy traffic once the site can be sped up a bit. (I believe we have lost many site viewers due to the slow loading times. People are impatient Crying or Very sad

)

Anyways, when we purchased the godaddy package, we purchased the "Deluxe Hosting with CGI - b - 1 Month" package for 3 years. I should be running the latest website updates v2.02.02, and I'm using NukeSentinel(tm) 2.4.2pl5.

I have also tried disabling certain modules and blocks (as suggested in other treads) although they haven't seemed to speed anything up. I greatly thank you very much for taking the time to read this, and for any help you can provide!

-Shawn
(bz90)

Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:32 pm

What does GoDaddy say about this? It may have nothing to do with your site, but someone else's that is hogging server resources.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:27 am

Thank you very much for the reply Montego. I'm currently awaiting a response from godaddy, and I'll be sure to let you know what they have to say. =)

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:48 am

For sure ... blocks/Modules etc, that are pulling content from other places, like RSS, can slow your nuke down considerably. So, my RSS blocks live in the lower right, therefore they almost load last and the user isn't looking at a mostly blank index.php.

Server resources are always an issue. Sometimes your nuke rocks, sometimes it goes nowhere. What could this on/off behaviour have to do with your unchanged code or config?

For example... host silliness ... my host does a backup of the entire cluster about 8pm on Saturday night ... sheesh, I'm guessing they might be writing that backup to my main domain directory too. < Wink

>

Also, my "shared" memory is right up there about 99.85% used. Host says this doesn't matter because of blah, blah, blah ... but, imho, anything using 99.85% of memory is a sign that something might not be broken atm, but soon enough, it's going to break, or at least wear out user patience and and hard drive.

Also, what about images? If they aren't optimized for the web...

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 8:38 am

This is an interesting thread that I thought perhaps I should steer away from do to my views with hosts.

Cody, no host should ever have resources reach that high, non-intentionally, and even if it was intentional, that shows either ignorance or bad setup.
If it isnt intentional, then it should not happen often if at all.

As for the backup at 8pm Saturday night, I personally would never do this as 8pm saturday night is a peak hour.

Well not to go too much into detail but heres the kicker with hosts and why their cpu usage rises.

A lot of times, the cpu usage will rise dramatically if the server is used for spamming, I know this to be true as its happened to myself, but heres what should be done, certain things can be done to prevent spamming off the server, The efforts have its downsides as well, they can possible cause legit scripts to be marked as spam but luckily, this is rare. as a client you should know this is a possible reason because that means that if your server can be used like this, your site can as well. Now another cause for high cpu usage is an attack from the outside, like a ddoss, This is common and almost all hosts face this, there is very little the host can do except optimize the system and even then, its Extremely hard to prevent this as it will cause spikes. Other then those 2 their are very few reasons any cpu usage should rise up to any extreme amount that is not caused by an outside source.

The other reasons are as followed, but not limited to this:
The hosts jamb packs the server with a lot of accounts(more then the server is equipped to handle).
The hosts has not properly setup things such as exim(mail).
Hosts runs processes that use a lot of resources during peak hours.
Conflict in hosts or server configuration.
Badly written scripts being run(Can be configured to not use a lot of resources).
User is allowing massive uploads/downloads.
User has a spam script on server that host is unaware of and does not use proper checks(badly written script that will not use a lot of resources but ran many times, simultaneously, ie a bunch of people open it up via browser).

All these things can cause the cpu or server resources to be used to a high degree.
It is much harder to tell if the host is doing anything so we must attempt to see if the user is doing anything:

What to look for:
Check your access loggs, see how many times your script is being opened. [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] Vary usefull, make sure spf record exists, if not, ask host to apply one to your account. v=spf1 a mx ~all is an example and will limit your e-mail spoofing.
Look for new files that you do not recognize, If available, run av on your sites folder to make sure nothing is in their that the av recognises as harmfull, may return legitimate files as virus so be carefull.
Uploads/downloads, check your loggs, make sure that you know whats being uploaded and downloaded, set downloads to registered users, spam authentication helpfull if you have one.

Run phpinfo();
It may reveal an optimizing engine and a few other valuable pieces of information to help look at server configuration.

I really hope this helps you in your investigation.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:39 am

I see you have site supporters and the Internet Security News by McAfee! both of which can slow your site down a ton.

But I honestly would have to go with a hosting issue, because of my exp with godaddy. So far I have had 8 different people using their service and they have had the same experiences you have had. Speed issues, DB issues and mod_security setup so ineptly it was sad. All 8 have moved hosts to something different.

Usually I try to say out of hosting conversations because everyone has their own opinions, but my time talking to they and dealing with others that have used them has lead me to have a strong opinion about their service.

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:13 pm

Well, I received a response from GoDaddy, which seemed just like a cookie cutter response to any latency issue. They basically said "Send us the ping results " blah blah blah... it has nothing to do with the ping. As it happens everytime I visit the page during peak hours. Typical customer service from a large company I guess. Any ideas where I could transfer my hosting to? As well as if godaddy offers refunds on the 3 years we paid them? I'm going to look into it as well but who knows.. maybe someone knows the answer to my questions off the top of their heads!

Thank you all so very much again!

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:44 pm

A few of us hosts.

Raven might have something right up your alley thoug, I sudjest you look at it, as for GoDaddy, well Good luck but I personally have never seen it happen.

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:09 pm

So I keep contacting godaddy about the problem, and they continue to claim that its the script / code itself, yet I have very little modifications if any to the code. Not to mention I have created / installed a new nuke installation and even that one suffers from the same problems. Now they're asking for a tracert result from me. Guessing their next "cause" I'm sure will be them blaming my ISP or my computer. Anyone else have issues with godaddy and nuke sites? Also if anyone has some links to good, reliable, web hosting. I'm going to take a look into Raven's hosting offers, but wasn't sure what others are available.

Thanks a bunch!

Involved Joined: Dec 27, 2005 Posts: 296

I've heard here and there people having issues with godaddy; speed being one of them, but have never used them myself.
I can attest for Raven's hosting. Tech support can't be beat, the price is extremly reasonable and you have full control over your site. The few times there has been a server issue with Raven, there is always an e-mail warning of the down-time or if it was a malfunction, an explanation of what happened. You can't beat having a real genuine and dedicated person who loves what he does as your host versus hired chimps reading from a script and slinging poo at you. *cough* Jumpline *cough*

RavensScripts

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:25 pm

Two good sources of information:
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

and
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:00 pm

Thanks for the replies montego and srhh!

I agree fully with what your saying Srhh about Raven's hosting. It truly does seem like Raven cares about his clients and provides great, technical support, reliability, and assistance. I'm pretty sure we'll be switching to his hosting services, just trying to cancel / refund our current service (unused paid periods) with GoDaddy and then voilla, we'll swap!

=)

Thank you all again for the help and support!

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:00 am

I'm curious - if GoBaddy say its your script, they should be able to give you some data to support that right?

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 7:12 pm

Already canceled my hosting through godaddy, and moved to Raven!!

Raven's been such a great help and support, not to mention super speedy responses to all my emails, which is by far much better than a big ole' company with zero support or brainpower behind its mouse wheel.

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 7:41 pm

blackzeus90, you have stepped out of the "darkness" and into the "light"! RavenWebHosting is AWESOME! (Now, just don't slow down my sites... killing me

)

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:15 pm

Well Montego, after much hard work, and many annoying emails I've sent raven, I believe I have managed to get the site back up and running!

I thought raven was going to shoot me there for a moment, but we finally nailed down the issue with some SQL troubles "I" was having. It was entirely on my part, and he bared with me... the good guy that he is, lol.

I hope I don't slow down any other sites, hehe.... oh great, now you have me worrying about that now Montego. Crying or Very sad

All I have to say is summed up in this cute lil emoticon! : RavensScripts

If you care to take a peek at the site, and its super fast loading speeds, feel free to check it out here: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Thanks a bunch again for everyones help, and especially raven for putting up with me! Godaddy would have just ignored me or stapled my account with a free week or something just to shut me up, lol

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 6:31 am

Excellent. Good luck!