Hello,
As of today my fourm has nearly 1500 members, 5000 posts and 2200+ threads only. My site is hosted on a VPS server. I'm getting cpu over usage warning very frequently. I asked my hosting company about the issue that, why such a small forum consuming so high resources?
They said, it may be because of spam bots. If you think that's true, please suggest me how can I prevent such spam bot activity?
Or, is there any other reason behind this high usage? Please let me know.
Please note that, My hosting cost is 2.5x higher than my income. So, if I can't find the reason and can't solve it, may be I have to stop the forum. I'm so much disappointed.
I'm waiting for your suggestions/solution.
There are many potential issues, but if you suspect bots, first you need to ensure it actually is the case.
The Who's Online page can give a bit of a hint - if you see a large number of guests visiting the no permissions page, or attempting to post threads/posts, that could be a sign.
Check what's actually using CPU on your VPS using the top command.
Check your webserver logs - is there a lot of activity from only a few IPs? Are there a lot of attempts to register/post threads that don't go anywhere?
Who's Online page shows 'Registering' most and no permissions page also.
And only few percentage of visitors goes to 'thread' (reading thread) page.
Not sure how much you're paying for VPS, but a mid or even low-level shared hosting should be enough to cover your forum.
How many guests do you have?
Do you have a screenshot of your usage?
Do you have any other sites on the account besides the forum?
I was about to start a new thread posting about a similar issue. My forum gets mysql errors even thought it's not all that busy. I too get the occasional bot but not that many.
So I was wondering if there was any tips on optimizing it further. Maybe only show x amount of threads per page would help for example?
Thank you
PinkStar
(2014-04-23, 10:02 AM)DrXotick Wrote: [ -> ]Not sure how much you're paying for VPS, but a mid or even low-level shared hosting should be enough to cover your forum.
How many guests do you have?
Do you have a screenshot of your usage?
Do you have any other sites on the account besides the forum?
I pay $50/month (4 CPU Cores, 1.5GB Dedicated Memory)
In 48 hours, I get around 2500-3000 guests, but only 20-25 registered members.
I have another smaller site also.
I don't have usage screenshot, but look at my forum's 'Who's Online' pages screenshot in attachment. Most are trying to register, but usually most of them are unsuccessful, they can't register.
That is way way too much you're paying IMO. You should be able to get away with $5 a month basic shared hosting.
Check your cPanel resource useage statistics to see what your useage is.
Is your other smaller site a forum on MyBB software?
I recommend using 'Are you a human' plugin. The bots will never be able to register.
(2014-04-23, 04:11 PM)houque Wrote: [ -> ] (2014-04-23, 10:02 AM)DrXotick Wrote: [ -> ]Not sure how much you're paying for VPS, but a mid or even low-level shared hosting should be enough to cover your forum.
How many guests do you have?
Do you have a screenshot of your usage?
Do you have any other sites on the account besides the forum?
I pay $50/month (4 CPU Cores, 1.5GB Dedicated Memory)
In 48 hours, I get around 2500-3000 guests, but only 20-25 registered members.
I have another smaller site also.
I don't have usage screenshot, but look at my forum's 'Who's Online' pages screenshot in attachment. Most are trying to register, but usually most of them are unsuccessful, they can't register.
Why you not convert Mybb to Xenforo and all your problems are solved, i do this and have same problem like you, after convert it to Xenforo using shared hosting with 512MB PHP limit and never got any problems like with Mybb.
just get cloudflare or install nginx.
Well, many sites are crawled by bigger amount of bots and they don't suffer from too high CPU usage. You should rather focus on optimising your forum. For example, why is there a duplicated 'Most Recent Posts Stats' table on index?
http://www.hoxforum.com/index.php
(2014-04-24, 07:03 AM)mostarac Wrote: [ -> ]Why you not convert Mybb to Xenforo and all your problems are solved, i do this and have same problem like you, after convert it to Xenforo using shared hosting with 512MB PHP limit and never got any problems like with Mybb.
Remember that this is MyBB support forum and posting solution like 'use Xenforo instead' aren't really helpful, especially when in first post it's stated that he can't spend much on a forum.