Is WordPress killing my Memset Miniserver?
I recently switched hosts from MediaTemple in the USA, to Memset in the UK. Initially happy with their low-end Virtual Miniserver, I’m beginning to think it’s just not up to the job.
I host two sites here, both powered by WordPress. One has virtually no audience, but the other—this very site, Frisk Design—has reasonable activity. Since my redesign, I’ve had a fair bit of exposure and two rather large traffic spikes crashed the web server and required a reboot.
I’m not happy.
At first, I thought that the VPS simply wasn’t up to the job. But it crashed several more times in the following weeks, even when traffic wasn’t high. Asking Memset support for help, they suggested that Analog Stats and SpamAssassin might be to blame as they consume a lot of server resources. I disabled Analog Stats and SpamAssassin wasn’t even running — and nothing improved. I still got a system hang a day later.
I have no complaint about the server performance in general. When it’s up and running, it flies and serves my WordPress pages much faster than MediaTemple ever did. It’s just when the server goes down that it’s obviously a problem.
The package that I’ve bought doesn’t get me a managed server. I have to do all server admin myself. So although Memset email support have been very helpful, anything they recommend I have to research and implement myself, either using the WHM / cPanel or command line stuff using SSH. Now, that kind of stuff does my head in — I know nothing about unix commands or troubleshooting memory consumption, and frankly I don’t want to either.
I’ve looked into different things that might be causing the problem. Perhaps WordPress is, as some people claim, unoptimised and inefficient? Maybe I need a WordPress static page caching plugin to decrease dynamic page creation? Maybe I need PHP opcode caching? Or perhaps, as Memset point out, the server simply isn’t powerful enough and I need to upgrade.
So what to do? Do I once again go through the horrible process of searching for a reasonably priced host? I just did that only a few months ago! Do I throw money at it, by upgrading the Miniserver and paying for managed support—taking me from £30 a month to around £80? Do I waste more hours looking for solutions that I have no clue how to implement?
I’m tired of this. I just need a solution where the host takes care of the details, and I can get on and run my business. If you have any ideas on how to fix this problem, I’m all ears. Or maybe you can suggest a good host that meets these criteria:
- Fully managed
- Servers in the UK
- Host multiple domains with separate accounts / cPanel access
- Not more than £40 per month
- Monthly payment plan
Thanks for any help you can offer; I’ve just about had it with hosting issues this year!