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we developed our social media platform using the elgg engine. our  site really has issues. its going down every after 30 minutes, now its completely down, we had accumulated about 8000 members. please advise what the problem could be. then are there any other new current themes we can use ?

  • Not mentioning what Elgg version you use and what theme you use makes it quite difficult to suggest any current theme you might be able to use. If a theme fits is also a question of personal preference to a certain extend, i.e. some might like the look+feel of a certain theme while others don't like it at all. So, I can only suggest to look through the available theme plugins on your own to find one that you like.

    Regarding the issue with your site going down it's also difficult to make any guesses at what might be the reason. Has the problem started after updating Elgg or a plugin? Have you checked if an Elgg cronjob is executed on the 30 minute interval causing the site to go down? If you haven't made any changes on your Elgg site and there's no corresponding Elgg cronjob running, it might not be the configuration of your Elgg site but rather a problem of the server itself causing the site to go down. Have you checked the server logs? Are you sure that the problem happens "exactly" every 30 minutes (which would make a cron task a likely cause) or does it happen "roughly" every 30 minutes? In the latter case I would guess that there might be some instability on the server (Apache, Mysql or other) or it might be a problem with your site running into some limits (not enough ram, limitation of mysql connections or some other limit) that might be reached due to the number of users logged in on your site (8000 users in total but how any concurrent users?). If your site is growing but your server resources do not match the increasing requirements of resources due to the higher number of users, there's a point sooner or later when the server just can't handle the load anymore. Check the server logs and monitor the server load and server resources used. Do you see a physical limit of the server reached (or at least getting almost reached) before the site crashes? Or you might ask the hosting support if they can help you finding the reason for the server crashing.

  • You can't run a network with 8000 without people who can help you debug issues. We can't tell you what's wrong: we have no idea what plugins you are using, what queries you are running, or what's in your logs. It's like saying I don't feel well and asking a doctor to diagnose your illness without visiting a hospital.

  • if there was a bug, the loggs would have capturerd. and cronjob is deactivated, the plugins am using are from elgg

  • Without anymore info about possible errors logged in the server logs it's really impossible to provide any help. What is "completely down"? You surely get some kind of error message in the browser and/or in the server logs. We need to know about them.

    The only thing that comes to my mind that I haven't menitioned yet is a crashed database. Have you checked that for example with phpMyAdmin? But even then there would be an error displayed. And a crashed table wouldn't explain the site having gone down every 30 minutes if you really have no cronjobs running. Though I wonder if you're site fully works then as any Elgg version starting from Elgg 1.9 would require at least the 1 minute cronjob for notification sending to work (or are you still on Elgg 1.8 or older - you still haven't given any info about that either).

    Again, 30 minutes exactly or roughly 30 minutes? If it's not always exactly 30 minutes it's rather some server issue (resource limits) that hits the server due to too much traffic on the site. Are Apache, MySQL and other server processes still running normally? You need to look into that as "site has crashed" can have reasons not directly caused by Elgg (but maybe only indirectly if your Elgg site requires more resources than the server can handle).

  • Check your analytics to see if the traffic coincides with poor site performance. Follow the performance recommendations. Upgrade Elgg if possible. Check MySQL for slow queries.