Shared Hosting - Trying to save my site.

[ChicagoCoin]

My site is on Shared Hosting and has been for the past 19 years, we have noticed sporadic site response times, sometimes it loads fine and other times it takes awhile to load, also have some 503 errors. I contacted the host and it's due to a procwatch daemon.

Sorry for the trouble with your site. It turns out that the account has
processes are being killed by our procwatch daemon. Procwatch is a
daemon that runs constantly on shared servers to monitor the usage of
RAM/CPU and execution time so that no single user can use an
inappropriately high percentage of the shared resources and impact the
overall health of the server or the server’s ability to serve all users’
pages.

Additionally, all processes run by all users on the server from the same account are also counted together. When a process is killed it is generally not using too much memory by itself, it was just the process that tipped the total usage over the limit.

I was trying to get things back to normal before receiving this response and updated XF to the latest version, they first suggested to use a robots.txt file to limit crawlers, did some research and it looks like a different option might be CloudFlare? It's available but not activated. They mention that it's memory related and then suggest a VPS or private server. This has just been a hobby of mine and due to the size of the site, a VPS is not something that I'd consider.

I'm wondering if Cloudflare and/or a robots.txt file would help, I should mention that I have a custom phprc file (php.ini) file that I altered a long time ago to allow large file uploads, maybe that also needs to be altered?

 

[JustinHawk]

My site is on Shared Hosting and has been for the past 19 years, we have noticed sporadic site response times, sometimes it loads fine and other times it takes awhile to load and even some 503 errors. I contacted the host and it's due to a procwatch daemon.



I was trying to get things back to normal before receiving this response and updated XF to the latest version, they first suggested to use a robots.txt file to limit crawlers, did some research and it looks like a different option might be CloudFlare? It's available but not activated. They mention that it's memory related and then suggest a VPS or private server. This has just been a hobby of mine and due to the size of the site a VPS is not something that I'd consider.

I'm wondering if Cloudflare and/or a robots.txt file would help, I should mention that I have a custom phprc.txt (php.ini) file that I altered a long time ago to allow large file uploads, maybe that also needs to be altered?

You can use VPS from Contabo : https://contabo.com/en/vps/ or from https://www.netcup.eu/vserver/

They are cheap and better and had used them for years, never had any issues at all with them.

 

[Muddy Boots]

Change Hosts as per above posts - The issue is your host

Go with the recommended ones above MattW or MySiteGuy

Or get a small VPS (links in my sig to some good ones) and use Centminmod

Easy option is another host and let them transfer the files etc if your not tech savvy

 

[Mr Lucky]

Go with the recommended ones above MattW or MySiteGuy

I’d agree.

I had a similar problem years ago. The (smallish) site was having speed issues and host just kept persuading me to switch to VPS which I did but no improvement. Changed host and they just kep suggesting to keep "upgrading the package." Then switched to MattW who took the time to identify the problems (attacks mostly I think), sorted it out and all worked fine again on shared hosting.

 

[ChicagoCoin]

I've only changed hosts about 4 times in 20 years. I don't even see hosting options at some of the links provided, I'd move my files, don't need to migrate..

I think I'll answer the email and threaten to leave Dreamhost, been there a long time but am shocked that this procwatch daemon limits my speed on the server and my site might not be the problem.

 

[motowebmaster]

I've only changed hosts about 4 times in 20 years. I don't even see hosting options at some of the links provided, I'd move my files, don't need to migrate..

I think I'll answer the email and threaten to leave Dreamhost, been there a long time but am shocked that this procwatch daemon limits my speed on the server and my site might not be the problem.

Do you mind sharing what you're paying for your particular service?

You don't want to block good bots.

 

[JustinHawk]

I don't even see hosting options at some of the links provided, I'd move my files, don't need to migrate..

The link that I provided are for VPS and to use their service you will need to buy and configure the servers and migrate the site yourself.

Incase you need any help with server setup, let me know will help you for free if its just for hobby

 

[ChicagoCoin]

I pay a discounted rate on a 2 Year Plan of $190.80, with supposedly unlimited storage but as I mentioned earlier they started to delete my backup folder and give me a 60 day free trial for something called DreamObjects to access my database backups that they deleted. It's paid up until February but when I go to mange my account I now see this:

You're using a plan that is no longer offered to customers. Changing your plan may result in permanently losing a promotional rate associated with this plan, so please be certain about any changes you make!

The new plan options are $13.99 Monthly, 1 Year $155.88 or 3 Years at $395.64

I'm going to try and mess around with CloudFlare and perhaps a robots.txt file and see if there are differences, early next week I'll respond to DH and tell them what I think about their damned procwatch daemon.


Thanks All for the suggestions!

 

[DarkGizmo]

Take a look into HawkHost. I've been with them for years.

I got an affiliate URL if you're interested in trying them out - https://my.hawkhost.com/aff.php?aff=1537

 

[Muddy Boots]

I don't even see hosting options at some of the links provided, I'd move my files, don't need to migrate..

@ChicagoCoin

MattW Prices here and MySiteGuy Prices here

 

[VBX Co]

+1 for @MattW