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Hi team
Over the last few days my shared-server host's (HostGator) server keeps 'resticting' my website, apparently because I regularly reach my limit of simultaneous processes running (max limit is 25) and high CPU usgae. After much back and forward with them they point the fingure at SP private messaging. That seems unusual to me because at this stage I have very few members and only 2 or 3 may be using messaging at the same time (if at all). This is what their support has had to say:
"I do see that you are hitting the 25 user process limit. It appear s to be the forum private-messaging.
and after I queried it they said:
"Is it private messaging like a private chat? 25 processes....This means that each request to your site or cron job generates 1 process from start to finish...You can have 25 of these processes running at the same time. For normal web traffic this is not an issue as each request is generally very brief. However, when you have lots of requests that are opened and say not completed...then those requests stack up until you cannot have any more. In some cases this can be an attack. In others it can be that the process is just taking too long to complete. In this instance. It appears that you are posting responses....( This was just a snapshot of a single instance where you were at the limiit)."
I find it hard to believe a very small site running a SP forum with Private Messaging, also with Quckchat added (and hardly used), could cause such problems.
Is there something I should be doing to better manage PMs so this won't happen? I expect in the future I will have many members PMing and Chating me ans each other.
I have only found 1 other post here that talks about excess processes (which did involve HostGator), though that didn't appear due to PMs, rather moving to a VPS and back.
If this isn't a SP issue should I be looking at changing hosts? My new Aussie IT support company suggested if I moved to their cloud-based hosting I wouldn't have this problem'
I would greatly appreciate your thoughts as I, and my existing members, can hardly use the site because it keeps getting restricted to a snails pace.
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yikes! only 25 processes... quite stingy... must be shared hosting...
private messaging, as you suspected, does not require much resources, certainly not more than a process... but your host is right, if more than 25 folks (this includes bots) try to access the site, you can run out of processes with such a small number...
the only thing that I would check is the auto update option on forum - options - global settings... what do you have that set to? we recommend no less than 300... you also could try disabling it.. if off, just means you wont see unread post counts, inbox counts, etc updating without a page reload...
Visit Cruise Talk Central and Mr Papa's World
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Hi again
Yes, it is shared hosting.
Auto update is set to 300, though the radio button is grey, not green. Should it be selected and green?
Post/Topic cache is 200. I don't believe I have changed these settings since installation.
Cheers,
David
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No, grey already means its disabled... post/topic cache has nothing to do with pms...
one thing worth checking would be the IPs that are hitting the private messaging and the time... it might be a type of attack if same ip and hitting the url often...
Visit Cruise Talk Central and Mr Papa's World
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In the example above (that HostGator sent me) all PM IPs are me and someone I was messaging.
So it appears if it not something I can tweak better in SP, then the solution lies in changing to either a VPS or dedicated server, or changingto a host that doesn't put these process limit restrictions on me?
My Aussie new web tech support company suggests if I move to them I won't have this issue. I think they use some combo of server & cloud-hosted delivery.
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cant give much advice - personally think shared hosting is quite poor - get what you pay for... but of course, understand fiscal constraints...
If the IPs were all you, then there is not really any reason for that many processes... apache should be configured to keep your connection alive such that you loading pages wouldnt cause new processes... or if it did require that, the old process would time out... one user taking up 25 processes is not normal...
Visit Cruise Talk Central and Mr Papa's World
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Yes, it's a bit of a mystery to me. HostGator came back with some more tweaks with caching, number of active plugins, and using their cPanel cron scheduling instead of WP Cron, though I don't believe any of them address the issue of why they say I regularly have 25 process running and that is the limit for all their shared servers.
I think I will change hosts to one that will guarantee me this sort of issue won't happen.
Thanks yet again for your great product, service and support. Top shelf as usual 
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Host gator constantly blocked our site for the same thing, I think we lasted 4 days with them before I switched to a different hosting solution, we were not even using simple press at the time
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kvr28 said
Host gator constantly blocked our site for the same thing, I think we lasted 4 days with them before I switched to a different hosting solution, we were not even using simple press at the time
Thanks for your input. I didn't believe it was a fault of SP.
Was your site particularly heavy with processes running frequently?
I take it your new server has no problems with member messaging / chat applications running?
I am going to move to a different hosting solution.
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never really figured it out, I believe we were using mingle at the time, after sitting on hold through chat for a half hour, they would unblock our site and tell me I needed to fix the resource hogging issues, within 5 minutes I was blocked again, got tired of messing with it and switched to wp-engine
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