Please help, trouble with performance trying to figure out how to optimize

My site is:  printmymini.com

I am on a arvixe, shared server.  At this point, I am not yet expecting to have very many member or much traffic.

Already, even with just me using the site to develop, I am having a lot of page loading errors and problems.

Even though on my cPanel, it appears like my page isn't using much as far as resouces, I can see that when I am getting page load errors and problems that on the stats panel, the CPU is spiked and the VM is blown out.

I have had no luck with Arvixe Support helping me diagnose the problem - they seem to want to assure me it is a problem with my site, development / plugin or something.

I just can't figure out what the deal is.

If you can help me ... join the site, message JKG / hogjonny / admin and I'll give you admin so you can poke around.

I would greatly help anyone who can offer me some noob assistance.

  • BTW ... here is my latest site error log:

    [Mon Feb 04 09:10:14 2013] [error] [client 70.116.78.207] File does not exist: /home/hogjonny/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://printmymini.com/
    [Mon Feb 04 09:10:14 2013] [error] [client 70.116.78.207] (12)Cannot allocate memory: couldn't create child process: /opt/suphp/sbin/suphp for /home/hogjonny/public_html/engine/handlers/page_handler.php, referer: http://printmymini.com/
    [Mon Feb 04 09:10:14 2013] [error] [client 70.116.78.207] File does not exist: /home/hogjonny/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://printmymini.com/
    [Mon Feb 04 09:10:14 2013] [error] [client 70.116.78.207] File does not exist: /home/hogjonny/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://printmymini.com/
    [Mon Feb 04 09:10:14 2013] [error] [client 70.116.78.207] (12)Cannot allocate memory: couldn't create child process: /opt/suphp/sbin/suphp for /home/hogjonny/public_html/engine/handlers/cache_handler.php, referer: http://printmymini.com/

    [edit] - I've removed all of the repeating errors for brevity - (Matt Beckett)

  • To a certain extend it is a problem of your site - running Elgg - as generally speaking a shared server is often too weak and too limited in certain things to offer enough power for a smooth experience. Running an Elgg site results in a certain CPU load - a load that is surely higher compared to running only some static html pages or some simplier forums or similar. It also depends on the plugins you have installed on your Elgg site if the CPU load is only high or very high. Using very high CPU resources will sooner or later surely result in your site taken offline by the webhoster as it does not only affect your site but all other sites on the same server, too. Most likely you will find some terms about resource usage limitations in the terms of use of the webhoster.

    In your case there seem to be some strange issue though: the "Cannot allocate memory" error seems to indicate there's a problem on your server. Normally the memory is "unlimited" on shared servers - or more specifically there should be enough memory installed. If there's not enough free memory available there seems to be something not running right. It might be worth asking Arvixe about what exactly is using so much memory. Maybe it's not even your site but some other customer on the same server that is causing the problem. This is another disadvantage on shared servers: on site could slow down all other sites on the same server. And maybe Arvixe simply puts too many sites on one server - cheaper for sure but resulting in server issues easily.

    A shared server also does not allow you to optimize much - if anything. You can't optimize Apache or MySQL. You can't install any php caching or other additional services. If you really don't get it working better on the shared server on Arvixe you will sooner or later consider to either update your hosting plan at Arvixe or change to another webhoster. Even for a small Elgg site a VPS hosting plan is a better choice in the long run.

  • Thank you for the feedback, it really helpful.

    It's kind of irritating that Arvixe advertises Elgg hosting (onclikc install, support, etc.), even at the cheaper personalClass level, but then in actuality this is not sufficent resources to actually employ a basic elgg community with only a few members.  Afterall, it's just experimental and at a very early development stage.

    I fully expected that if I actually got any traction and membership, I'd eventually have to deal with that and upgrade my account.

  • You shouldn't be running into memory issues though, I would guess that it is either a server issue, or you have something running into an infinite loop

  • How would I even begin to go about tracking down the issue?

    deactivate all the plugins and then reactivate them one at a time or something?

  • That's pretty much it unless you have any more meaningful error logs.  If a clean installation still runs in to those memory errors then it's a hosting problem.

Performance and Scalability

Performance and Scalability

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