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Web hosting problems – CPU resource over use – help!

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If anyone has any ideas as to how to reduce my various sites CPU resource usage on my web hosting server I’m all ears.

Yes, if you’ve been reading a number of blogs in a row you might have seen that I’ve posted about my problems on a few blogs – don’t get confused … it’s all me. I just need help and I’m looking for suggestions!

I’ve just spent the last few days updating all of our blogs software and plugins. Turning off unnecessary plugins or ones that I thought were using resources that I didn’t need them too.

I did add one plugin to all our sites though and it was WP-Cache. I’ve had a few people ask me if I’m using that yet and yes, I’ve been using it now for a few days.

Trouble is my web host still says my sites are over using the CPU resources.

Here’s whats going on in my hosting account. Maybe someone can see a way I can reduce CPU usage?

I’ve got a shared hosting plan on Lunar Pages. The plan is very similar to what one would get with BlueHost. There are 17 websites on my account – 10 domains, 17 sites.

On my main domain Feverishthoughts.com I’ve got 7 wordpress blogs running. I bought 6 new domains to move some of those blogs to and I’ve been working on those sites but as of right now they take up little space and likely use very little of the CPU resources. However my plan is to move the sites over when the new domains gain a bit of PR … then I’ll be back to 11 or 12 websites.

Two domains have websites on them. One is a very large and fairly busy HTML based website. Since it’s HTML based I don’t think it’s causing the problem. This domain also has a subdomain running a blog on it.

The other website is running on Joomla. I had an old version of Joomla running the site until two days ago. Now that application has been updated to the latest version and I’ve removed some components and modules that might have been causing problems.

I’m actually hoping that it was the Joomla site that was causing the trouble – and hoping that by upgrading the site and getting ride of a few faulty components that I’ve solved the problem. I’ll probably find out later today when I hear from my web host about my CPU resource usage over the last day or so. Oh caching is activated on the Joomla site as well and has always been so if it’s working properly it should help.

So again … all the blogging software has been updated. Plugins such as google sitemap have been updated, and the Joomla CMS has been updated. Plus I’m using WP-cache on the WordPress blogs.

I can’t think of anything else that I can try to do to lessen CPU usage.

The sites are fairly busy but not that busy! How many page views and unique visitors a month does it take to make you move to a Virtual private server or a dedicated server?

Out of the 11 active sites only 3 are extremely busy. The rest get traffic but only 100 to 150 visitors a day at the most.

In total – all the sites – active and not yet very active domains got a total of 255,641 visitors and 722,038 page views last month. I’m sure the sites will be up to a million page views per month by August or so, especially when the new domains get a bit more active.

I’m not saying that 3/4 of a million page views a month is a small amount but really … is that enough to have to move off shared hosting?

Any ideas? I’ve got to resolve this problem ASAP as it’s driving me nuts and keeping me from doing real work on my sites.




Move data from one blog to a WordPress blog

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Did you know that with the new 2.1+ version of WordPress you can easily move Data such as comments, and posts from one WP blog to another?

Lets say that you want to move files from a site called mydomainA.com to another called mydomainB.com. Now it doesn’t mater if these blogs are on the same domain as in myblog.com/blog or blog.myblog.com or different domains altogether. What matters is that both must be using the same version of WordPress.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure your blogs are using WP 2.1 + and that both are using the same version – if they aren’t you need to upgrade your WordPress version first.

2. Back up your files on each blog!

You can backup your blog in two fairly simple ways:

A. Use a WordPress Backup plugin and download the backup to your computer

B. Or, If your web host uses C-Panel Login to your C-Panel and click on the icon marked BackUp. You can do a full backup of your home directory and or you can download copies of your MySql database(s).

Personally – If I’m doing a big job like a major upgrade or transferring files I backup with the plugin AND with the C-Panel backup service. Better safe than sorry is what I always say.

If you did happen to download the WordPress backup plugin I would seriously consider using it to backup your blog at least once week. My former web host shut down my account at the beginning of February without notice and for a short while I didn’t know if I could get backups of my sites. It was a very scary and stressful time. Be smarter than I was – backup your sites regularly!

Back to transferring data such as posts from one blog to another …

Now that you are done upgrading WordPress if you needed to, and backing up your sites you can begin to transfer your files from one site to another.

I’m describing this as if it’s two wordpress blogs, but WordPress has made it easier to transfer files from say blogger or a Typepad blog into a WordPress blog using similar methods. However, since I don’t use other blogging platforms I’m only going to discuss the procedure for moving data from one WordPress blog to another:

3. Open up the ADMIN area of both of your wordpress blogs

4. In the MANAGE section of mydomainA.com (this is the blog you want to move files from) select EXPORT and download the export file to your computer.

5. In the MANAGE section of mydomainB.com (the blog you want to move files to) select IMPORT, then select WordPress from the list and find the export file that you just saved to your computer and import it into the mydomainA.com blog.

If all has gone well you should have all the posts from MydomainB.com in your MydomainA.com blog. Easy eh?

If things didn’t go well at least you have the backups that you made before hand. You did make the backup files didn’t you? You can re-install your backups if needed through C-Panels MySQL section. It’s a bit complicated and since everything hopefully went well I’m not going to describe how to do that in this post.

This is one of the features that I like best about the new WordPress 2.1+ version. They’ve made it so much easier to transfer files from one blog to another, or to even use the export feature as a method of backing up your files.

I hope that you’ve found this post helpful.

Easy way to create WordPress Blog

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There are several ways to install a new blogging platform onto your web hosts server. Today I’d like to tell you the easiest way to install WordPress onto your hosting server. Similar techniques can be used for other blogging platforms and or other programs that are available through your hosts Fantastico feature.

If your web hosting account is set up with C-Panel you’re in luck. You should be able to reach your C-Panel area directly simply by placing/cpanel at the end of your domain url. For example http://yourdomain.com/cpanel. Once you connect with C-Panel you’ll have to sign in with your hosting account user name and password.

Once you have signed into the C-panel area you’ll see a number of icons. Each icon will lead you to useful features that you can use to maintain your websites, webmail, MySQL databases and many other features.

One of the icons will be called Fantastico. Click on the Fantastico icon and you’ll be taken to a page that lists all of the different software applications that Fantastico can automatically install to your directories.

If you want to install a new WordPress blog simply look for the section that says Blogs. You’ll see WordPress listed there as well as perhaps a few other blogging platforms. Click on WordPress and go through the install procedure.

You’ll be asked which directory you’d like to host your new blog on. If you only have one domain hosted with your webhost the choice will be easy. Select your domain in the first section. Then, if you want the blog to be the main feature of your domain select leave the “install in Directory” section blank. If you’d like your blog to be reachable by an url such as http://yourdomain.com/blog then place a name for the new directory in this section.

Note, if you’d like to create a blog in a sub-domain you must use the sub-domain feature in C-Panel to create a sub-domain first, once you’ve done that you’ll see the sub-domain listed in your domain choices when you attempt to install WordPress. You’d select your new sub-domain and leave the “Install directory” section blank if you want your blog to be in a domain that looks like http://blog.mydomain.com.

The rest is pretty simple. Fill in the rest of the information such as your log in user name and password. This can be, and usually is different than the log in that you use for your webhost. It could be as simple as username admin and a unique password.

Continue to follow the directions and in minutes you’ll have a new blog to begin setting up. I’ll talk about setting up a new blog in a future post.

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