[-Q-]

Has anyone had any issues with server load on a dreamhost account? I got an email the other day saying that my load was 91.16cp (what the heck is that? Not seen server load measured in that way) and that it would have to be lowered. Any thoughts on what it could be? We have about 150 people hitting a geeklog board throught the day (our highest simultaneous load was 44 people at one time) so I don't think it's the board software, but haven't ruled it out.

Any help would be appreciated!

[maccrazy]

The server load is not just what your account is using, but what everyone else's accounts on the server are using as well. High server loads are one of the side effects of cheap hosting (though it shouldn't be that high).

[jay3ld]

Originally Posted by -Q-

Has anyone had any issues with server load on a dreamhost account? I got an email the other day saying that my load was 91.16cp (what the heck is that? Not seen server load measured in that way) and that it would have to be lowered. Any thoughts on what it could be? We have about 150 people hitting a geeklog board throught the day (our highest simultaneous load was 44 people at one time) so I don't think it's the board software, but haven't ruled it out.

Any help would be appreciated!

What boards you using? SMF boards unless properly upgraded to the latest version have some security holes which can spike ur cpu usage. i was at 40% the about 2 months ago and then i worked around some stuff and the released a patch for a the version i was using that would cause some hosts to flag a dos attack. which also explains the high cpu usage because since i did that fix i haven't had a problem.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Any more thoughts about Forum software and server load? How many / how active must things be on a board before it starts taxing a typical, low-cost host's server. Is it going to depend largely on things like SEARCHes?

MacNN, for example usually only has ~100 people "active" (which may mean they forgot to close window to thread they were just looking at).

I ask because I want to consider starting small on a forum and trying to build it into something hundreds (eventually thousands) might be consulting first thing every morning.

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by jay3ld

What boards you using? SMF boards unless properly upgraded to the latest version have some security holes which can spike ur cpu usage. i was at 40% the about 2 months ago and then i worked around some stuff and the released a patch for a the version i was using that would cause some hosts to flag a dos attack. which also explains the high cpu usage because since i did that fix i haven't had a problem.

We use Geeklog for our boards as it has a minor CMS module that's good for news posts and the forum software itself. I've checked the Geeklog support forum and haven't seen a reference to higher than normal processor loads, so I'm mystified as to what it could be.

We've had a couple spam bots try and hit the site that would spike our server load briefly, but there's nothing in the logs that I can see that accounts for such a steady, higher than normal load. Of course, reading server logs is not my area of expertise so I may be missing something.

[jay3ld]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet

MacNN, for example usually only has ~100 people "active" (which may mean they forgot to close window to thread they were just looking at).

Macnn im sure has bought their own servers for their website. Its only them on the server and not 10 or 20 other websites as well. This is allowing them to have a better website.

-Q-: You are looking for in your access logs something that is happening to often. like 10 or 20 in a row of the same file being accessed.
and its best if you use a .htaccess to block out those spam bots because most spam bots ignore your robots.txt file.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Thanks, Jay...
So, if I think I may get into a heavy-load situation I'm going to need to get up to speed about DEDICATED servers.

I'm no Linux geek (or even newbie), so I've go to think about what hosts have good price/perf/reliability combos. The "Which host" threads don't seem to have much about HOW to pick DEDICATED server solutions.

Anybody got an idea where to start getting an education on this (for those low-geek-IQ folks still using the likes of DreamHost)?

[maccrazy]

Just start with shared hosting Love Calm Quiet. If your site takes off, then upgrade to a dedicated solution, but until then just find a reasonably priced host with reasonable specs.