Urgent wordpress assistance...

[Amit]

Hi Guys,

I need some seriously urgent wordpress assistance. Yesterday evening my webhost doteasy disabled my website. here is the message they sent me a couple of weeks ago identifying a problem my installation might have.

Dear Customer,

It has come to our attention that your MySQL database was causing a problem today. The MySQL database used up all the server resources and it could not release itself after it being executed for a long time. This caused server out of service and affected other customers on the same web server. To avoid further damages, we had temporary disabled the MySQL service.

Server Logs:

115251 choiceorg localhost.localdomain:44394
unlimitedchoice_org_-_blog Sleep 326 NULL
115284 choiceorg localhost.localdomain:44442
unlimitedchoice_org_-_blog Query 29 closing tables SELECT
post_id, meta_key, meta_value FROM wp_postmeta WHERE post_id IN (703) ORDER
BY post_id, meta_
115285 choiceorg localhost.localdomain:44443
unlimitedchoice_org_-_blog Query 22 Opening tables SELECT
meta_key FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'views' AND post_id = 703
115287 choiceorg localhost.localdomain:44447
unlimitedchoice_org_-_blog Query 1 closing tables SELECT
post_id, meta_key, meta_value FROM wp_postmeta WHERE post_id IN (703) ORDER
BY post_id, meta_

We suggest you to check your WordPress script again and correct the problem as soon as possible.

If you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this service ticket.
Thank you.

Please can anyone shed some light on this and where I can start in resolving the issue?? Unfortunately I don't know anything about scripting and only have basic knowledge about blogs, setups, mysql databases etc.

Any assistanc anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated!

[yogesh sarkar]

Going through your blog, I can see why your host has sent you this email.

You have 20 posts showing on the front page of your blog, which means the databases has to be queried to retrieve 20 posts, their related posts and tons of other sidebar links, each time the front page of your blog is opened!

Now this wouldn’t be a big deal if you are using something like wp-supercache or other cache plugins to cache the data so that the database doesn’t have to be queried each time, but I guess you aren’t doing that.

Here are the steps you can take:

• Reduce the number posts on front page to 5 or less.
  
• Use cache plugin like wp-supercache.
  
• Open your database in phpmyadmin and optimize it (check all tables and then choose optimize option at the bottom of the page (it could be under a drop down menu), you can also request your host to do the same.

[Amit]

Hey Yogesh,

Thanks for the suggestions.

To begin with I'm going to optimize the database and then reduce the posts on my home page to 5.

I've also removed the digg and stumble buttons I added recently as they were the most recent changes I've made to the blog.

If you have any other suggestions also please do let me know.

I'm gonna see how this goes before I try the supercache plugin as it looks complicated to setup.

A

[yogesh sarkar]

Which plugin were you using to display stumble and digg buttons? I am using Sociable on my blogs and it is good and allows you to add plenty of social bookmarking buttons.

As for supercache, it sounds complicated, however it isn't and barely takes 2-3 minutes to setup.

[Amit]

Ahh good point as I forgot to mention that earlier. I actually manually added the scripts into single.php. Do you think that might have done it?

[yogesh sarkar]

I doubt that, as the problem was with MYSQL load and adding them into the template wouldn't have caused any pressure on it.

[floslib]

I actually set up wp supercache just last night, and it seems to be working quite well for me. Unfortunately, I can only use the caching algorithms from the original plugin, and not the newest ones, because the server my site is hosted on is missing one of the apache modules needed for the newer algorithms.

I found it was moderately easy to set up, though I definitely needed some help from the troubleshooting section of the plugins page. It took me about 15 minutes to get the plugin itself set up, and an hour in total if you count the time to install plugins to backup my database and to then actually backup the database and site beforehand. I definitely wanted to be able to restore the site if things didn't work out, since I've heard of a few people having some issues with the plugin that made their sites not work properly. This seems to be very rare though, and certainly hasn't been my experience. But hey, that's what the backups are for. And I really needed to get the ability to make backups easily anyway, since I really should back my site up more often just in case.

The backup did turn out to be useful once, when I messed up editing a file and saw my site was missing afterward. To be safe, anytime you modify a file, just check your site afterward and make sure it's still there, if it is, you can move on, otherwise, time to get your old file and then try again.

I might be able to say more about the plugin in a bit, for now, I want to see how things go for awhile before I heap too much praise or criticism on it. For now though, it's safe to say it's doing what it's supposed to, and might not be a bad idea if you need your site to be more efficient.

[Amit]

Yogesh -

Sociable...is that another plugin that I can get? Also if I needed some help with installing the supercache would you be able to help me?

Someone also suggested to me that I delete all my installation files and re-install wordpress so that is an option I can do if all else fails.

Floslib

Thank you for the analysis...it's always good to know the experience everyone else has had with this sort of thing and knowing about doing the backups up front always serves as a good reminder? What apache module was missing? Do you know? That way I can also check to see if I'll experience the same scenario as you.


Thanks again for all your help, it really is appreciated!

[yogesh sarkar]

Amit there are no manual edits that you need to do apart from .htaccess rules which you will most likely need to insert into the existing file. Apart from this, you just need to change the permission for couple of folders, which is explained here WordPress › WP Super Cache « WordPress Plugins

In case you need help with it, let me know. If I am online at that time, I’ll help you out. Do take a backup of your database, wp-config.php and .htaccess file before you start installing it.

As for sociable, you can get it here, WordPress › Sociable « WordPress Plugins

[floslib]

Amit - The one that was missing for me is called mod_expires. The other ones required, at least that I can find, are the Apache mod mime and mod rewrite modules. There's a lot more information in the WP Super Cache installation instructions. Edit: Even if the modules are missing, you can use the functionality that WP Super Cache imported from WP Cache, so either way, you stand to gain some benefit from the plugin.

yogesh sarkar - Whether or not you need to edit certain files seems to turn out differently for different people. I had to edit or create quite a few different files, even after changing my file permissions, and it's a common enough issue that they tell you what to do in the faq section for the plugin. Whether or not Amit will need to do as much editing as me, I don't know, I just thought it would be good to know that there are different ways the installation could go and be prepared for it.

Either way, any editing involved isn't a big deal, just copy and paste stuff. I just made a mess of one of the files by accidentally deleting something while I was doing the pasting. Should have been a bit more careful there, but hey, that's what the backup was for.

[Amit]

Well so far so good, and I haven't needed to install superchache as yet but it's an option I will look into for the future!

Thanks again guys for all your help. So far all I've done is reduced my front page posts from 20 to 5 and I haven't heard from my host so I'm guessing (touch wood) that so far everything is ok.

I'm definitely going to install that socialble plugin though and Yogesh, I would like to take you up on your offer at some point in getting some assistance with the supercache plugin should I need to install it.

Flosib thanks again for all the advice! :-)

[yogesh sarkar]

Any time Amit, any time