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How to guarantee success under heavy load?

This topic contains 4 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  Paolo 6 years, 10 months ago.

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  • June 4, 2017 at 7:44 pm #381608

    Bruce Hoppe
    Expired Member
    Post count: 37

    Hello! My GD site supports an annual event and yesterday was the day. Unfortunately the site failed, at least in part due to the load. I reached my webhost provider (Bluehost) and they said I was exceeding allowed mySQL connections, causing the server to become unresponsive. They also said there was no way to increase my resources on the spot; the likely cause was a plugin that was failing to relinquish its mySQL connection after using; and that the only fix was to optimize my site. So… we made do completely WITHOUT my GD site on the one day we really wanted it.

    I am looking for ways to be 100% sure that this doesn’t happen again, hopefully without abandoning GeoDirectory. Thanks for your tips! Below is some more context, and I would be more than happy to follow up in additional detail.

    The site is https://arlingtonporchfest.org. It received 6,000 pageviews on Friday (day before the event) without any discernible hiccups. On Saturday it would probably have received 20,000 pageviews between 9am and 6pm, but the site basically became unresponsive around 10:30-11am after handling around 1,000 pageviews an hour in its last couple hours. The site uses GD Booster and MaxCDN but because the site became unresponsive these tools were of no use. (This is what MaxCDN service told me.)

    Aside from last week, when traffic ramped up from 1,000 to 6,000 pageviews per day (and would have hit 20,000 Saturday had it not failed), the site gets light traffic, maybe 40 pageviews a day. It’s a low budget event and I’m not sure how to prepare for that one day in June 2018 when we’ll next get slammed with heavy load.

    Last year I had the same WordPress site on the same host, but without GeoDirectory, and without any CDN, and it handled 13,000 pageviews on the day of the event with no problems.

    After GeoDirectory, probably the biggest change to the site since last year was switching to the KLEO theme (from Twenty Fifteen). If I could have tested another theme yesterday, I would have, but my site was unresponsive 🙁

    Thanks for your help. I am liking GeoDirectory and hoping to find a way to overcome this very discouraging failure.

    June 5, 2017 at 5:04 pm #381770

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    Hi Bruce,

    I am sorry to hear your site didn’t perform when you needed it to.
    You are in a bit of an unusual situation with your traffic.
    Can you link me to your current hosting package (so i can check the specs)

    If a dedicated server is not within the budget then you might be better talking to our recommended host to see what they suggest https://www.cloudways.com/

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

    June 5, 2017 at 5:07 pm #381772

    Paolo
    Site Admin
    Post count: 31206

    Hi,

    it’s very simple, ditch bluehost (commercial hosting good for amateur blogs with poor traffic only) and move to a cloud service that scale on request. Like Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    https://aws.amazon.com/websites/

    It will provide more hardware only when needed charging you only for the spike of traffic and then it will scale back for the rest of the time.

    Obviously get prepared to pay substantially more.

    Thanks

    June 5, 2017 at 6:35 pm #381795

    Bruce Hoppe
    Expired Member
    Post count: 37

    Thanks, Stiofan and Paulo, for your replies.

    I appreciate the recommendation for something like AWS but that skirts around my main question of how to be sure my site does not fail again on event day. For example,

    • How do I test Bluehost’s theory that my system has a mySQL connection leak?
    • Why did my site do fine one year ago with 13,000 page views on event day, but this year fail under the same load?
    • When I choose a host/site configuration for 2018, how can I test my preparedness for event day?

    I am open to the possibility that Bluehost service is “wrong” in suggesting a database connection leak, and that you are “right” in suggesting I need to move to a different host. HOWEVER one year ago I asked Bluehost service how to make sure I was ready for event day, and they said I would be fine, and they were right! If I’m going to take your advice to switch web hosts, I would like to understand what is the difference between Bluehost success in 2016 and Bluehost failure in 2017. It seems really likely that Geodirectory is changing something important about the resource demands of my site compared to last year, and so I’m hoping you can shed light on that.

    Stiofan, my current hosting package is Bluehost Shared “Plus”. See https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/price for very general info.

    June 5, 2017 at 7:49 pm #381817

    Paolo
    Site Admin
    Post count: 31206

    Hi,

    shared hosting plan are not enough to handle spikes of traffic with GeoDirectory: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/server-requirements/

    They just don’t provide enough resources.

    If last year you could manage 13k visits, probably you were using a much less resource hungry application. (basic search and so on).

    MySql leak doesn’t mean anything. What probably happened there is that mysql reached the maximum number of concurrent users and wasn’t able to keep up.

    If you use a service like AWS with the autoscaling option on, it will add server resources on demand and there will be no way your site will crash.

    Thanks

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