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managed wordpress hosting

Hosting predicament, need help!

M

melanie1

New Member
Hi everyone,

I have followed this forum for a couple of years but have never joined. Now, I really could use the advice.

I am in a hosting predicament that I don't know how to get out of. I run a fairly popular website that averages between 2000-4000 visitors per day. I received an e-mail from my host today that they can no longer support us on shared hosting because of CPU [we run WordPress as our interface + have a steady number of daily hits]. Their ultimatum is to move to a dedicated server or close down.

I am a housewife, I haven't got much disposable income and I don't think I can afford a dedicated server. I don't want to move to another shared host and have this problem again, either.

I just wanted to know what the best solution would be to solve the issue? If I had to move to a dedicated server, I'd be scrimping & saving every month, whereas right now I thought I was 'safe' having bought a two year hosting plan. I'd have to ask my visitors for donations nearly every week just to scrape by.

Their dedicated plans start at $99 which is ridiculously high for me. I was thinking of moving elsewhere, I just don't know what to do and your help would be much appreciated.

One thing I was looking at was Media Temple, they seem to be respectable but I'm not sure. Your advice on them?
 
In my experience most of the time it's CPU usage causing shared hosting accounts to hit a "limit" and not any bandwidth limit. And that CPU limit is never defined by the hosts on shared accounts. I think this is a problem in general for the webhosting industry. At the very least it's confusing for customers.

Is there anything special on your site that might be causing the CPU problems?

Maybe you should consider a managed VPS?
 
My website is an entertainment blog so our main interface is WordPress which I guess could cause too much PHP usage? I'm not too savvy with the technical side of things, I know enough to have gotten by working with shared and reseller hosting. I wouldn't know where to start with VPS or Dedicated!

I've been googling and have found that people who knew it was time to upgrade to a dedicated server have way more hits than I do - like 10,000 a day. I just don't know if it's *for me* and then there's the fact they're expensive, well to the average Jane anyway.
 
Do you have any plugins that may cause server issues? Have you upgraded your wordpress to 2.8? You could try a vps with a different provider. You can get one for under $50 if you can afford it.
 
Yer, if u can afford $20 a month, u should be abel to find a VPS thats good enough to do the job.
 
Hello,

Agreed a VPS would be a useful step. I would avoid Media Temple, they have, from reviews read, started going downhill lately. Check out UpTimeHost.com they are a pretty stable environment if a VPS is not the right price range.
 
LSComputers said:
Hello,

Agreed a VPS would be a useful step. I would avoid Media Temple, they have, from reviews read, started going downhill lately. Check out UpTimeHost.com they are a pretty stable environment if a VPS is not the right price range.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recommendation, Uptimehosts looks good. Have you used it?
 
Hello Melanie1,

I worked there for a breif time helped get the network to a good standpoint, then started my own vps/dedicated company. I know the network runs well, they are still in a prelaunch period so there are a few bugs inside the customer panel (everything is custom)... But its still a great service.
 
Melaine, try making a thread asking for recommendations and such in the Dedicated & Reseller Request forum, ask for a VPS. That way you don't have to pay a lot like in a dedicated server ;) And be sure to ask for managed, as a VPS requires more attention than Shared :p
 
Since you are running Wordpress, did you install WP-SuperCache? This should reduce your CPU usages significantly and by doing so you should be able to keep up in a shared environment.
 
I am a housewife, I haven't got much disposable income and I don't think I can afford a dedicated server. I don't want to move to another shared host and have this problem again, either.

I just wanted to know what the best solution would be to solve the issue? If I had to move to a dedicated server, I'd be scrimping & saving every month, whereas right now I thought I was 'safe' having bought a two year hosting plan. I'd have to ask my visitors for donations nearly every week just to scrape by.
Click to expand...

Because of costs, a dedicated server is prohibative and a VPS really would not be a solution for you
coming from a high hit shared environment where you actually probably have more resources allocated
in your original shared configuration already so don't listen to those people around here who recommend
your moving to a VPS environment. In certain cases, that would be an option but I don't believe that
to be a viable instance in your particular case based on what you wrote in your original post.

At the same time, you are running Wordpress (obviously blog post type content) which isn't likely to
have intensive updates each day as much as visitor traffic and that is a good thing for what I
am about to suggest to you below ...

The solution is simple then! You need multiple shared hosting accounts!

As I leave you scratching your head for a minutes, I'll explain.

If you get multiple shared hosting accounts (generally from different providers), you can
setup all the hosting accounts with the same identical web address and DNS load balance
your traffic between all the sites and when you post to your site, you just simply mirror
replicate your new posts to all the duplicate sites which can be done easily from script or
cron job easy enough. By doing this, you won't have any additional overhead expenses
beyond what you are paying now and none of your hosts will complain about excessive
traffic because the traffic would be divided up between your various hosting accounts.
The added advantage to this is also increased reliability because if any of your hosts are
down, the remaining mirror sites would still be online and your site would still remain
fully online and functioning even if some of your hosts were down at various times.

Now if you think this is something that would interest you, I would not only help
hand hold walk you through setting it up but I would also donate one of the accounts
for you to use in that configuration and help you with all the necessary scripting and
DNS configurations to make it work.

Contact me if you think this is something you would like to try.

Aside from here, you can also reach me at http://forums.toadsociety.com


PS: The $99 quote you gave for a dedicated server is lousy. I could help you find
much better than that if you really have your heart set on dedicated which i doubt.
 
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melanie1 said:
My website is an entertainment blog so our main interface is WordPress which I guess could cause too much PHP usage? I'm not too savvy with the technical side of things, I know enough to have gotten by working with shared and reseller hosting. I wouldn't know where to start with VPS or Dedicated!

I've been googling and have found that people who knew it was time to upgrade to a dedicated server have way more hits than I do - like 10,000 a day. I just don't know if it's *for me* and then there's the fact they're expensive, well to the average Jane anyway.
Click to expand...

did they told You how much used from CPU?

we already have client forum site about 2000 everyday
reseller client

You WordPress i don't think used high Usage
 
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While you have not spoke of the plugins your running or if your running any sort of cache on your blog, 2000 - 4000 hits a day is nothing. Your host is either overselling, and or you have a buggy plugin. While I can't compare your hosting provider to us I can tell you this. On the same server, we power 4 clients + many others but these 4 clients run 2 Wordpress blogs, and 2 phpbb boards. These 4 clients total avg hits are 1 - 1.5 Million hits a day.

I am sorry to sound like I am attacking anybody or any other provider but a solid shared server and working with ones clients, a 4000 hits a day site should be nothing at all.

Just my 2 cents.
 
VPS will be expensive for you because you'd have to pay for the control panel license and management costs.

Try shared hosting service on a semi-dedicated machine. A few companies offer this. They run only a few websites on one server for a premium price. Your better off with that.
 
Shared Hosting is fine if you find a decent host who bothers to check their server loads on a regular basis.
 
Melaine,

If you don't want your Web Host Provider to start nagging at your back once every two days about your high server load, then your ideal option would be to get a Medium-Ranged VPS (though a Shared Hosting typically would do fine. But you know, some Web Hosting Providers just like not using the CPU Resources that they have. They like to keep it minimal, somehow).

Like mentioned in an earlier post, you may want to try posting in the Dedicated Server & Reseller Requests Sections and see what you can get for <$20. I believe you will be able to get a good quote, as we've quite a number of reputable hosting companies here which would go an extra mile to customize a VPS Plan to suit your needs.

All the best.
 
Sounds like an over seller to me. I would say that you need to just get a new host. Care to mention the hosting company you're with? If you're in the market for a VPS though, I can personally vouch for Steadcom. I was with them for a year and it was the best hosting I've ever had.
 
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