Yesterday, I found a WordPress plugin that generates a memory usage report every time the memory usage exceeds a predetermined limit. I’ve set that to 16M, and learned that WP as I’ve installed it currently uses over 20MB from the time it initiates until it shuts down. It appears that given the traffic I have, if I limit my hosting plan to 400MB memory, at a cost of $20 a month, the site can stay up with no particular problems. This is affordable.
Also, I think this level of hosting means– in principle– I could can have roughly 25 visitors drawing memory at one time. (Real computer geeks are permitted to laugh uproariously. I don’t actually know. However, visitors aren’t always ‘people’, some are bots. And, people sometimes set their browsers to auto-refresh– which might load even if they are away from their desk. Oh. I do use SuperCache.)
Whatever, it looks like I peak at 400MB most days; see below: 
However, I am going to do a few experiments to see whether the memory usage when WP loads is caused by:
- A lard-ass theme.
- Plugins.
- Just stripped down WordPress with “essential” plugins.
Some blog-posts suggest it’s just WordPress.
So, immediately after hitting ‘post’, I’m going to turn off all plugins except AKISMET, SuperCache and the TPC Memory Usage. I will also switch to the default theme, which should be very light.
Then, I’m going to mow the lawn. After wards, I’ll check whether the reports of excess memory use go away. If they do not, I will budget some time to investigating other blogging options. Options include:
- free hosting at WordPress (which doesn’t let me moderate the way I prefer, and will make it difficult to run various scripts — like betting.)
- Looking at free-self hosted blogging platforms like Habari, which is supposed to be less of a memory hog.
The reason I will be exploring these options is that it appears WordPress is getting more and more memory intensive with each upgrade. If so, I may find I need to increase my hosting plan each time WP upgrades. That’s not going to be acceptable in the long run.
Meanwhile, if you are computer literate, make suggestions of things that might cure the memory problem. Better yet, if you already know it can’t be cured without totally rewriting WordPress, let me know. (I do not plan to re-write WordPress: I have neither time, interest or skill to do this.) Bear in mind, if you suggest something you think is “easy”, I will quite likely ask you “how” to do it. The fact is, it will be likely that I am not already familiar with the nuts and bolts of how to check certain things. If I did know how, I’d already know what’s causing this memory problem. (BTW: There are quite a few WP bloggers out there who have been having similar complaints since about 2008. So, this memory issue is not just mine.)
Update: Sept 30 Examining the memory usage, the roughly 3/4th to 7/8th of the usage seems to be loading WordPress itself along with the “essential” plugins. The “non-essential” plugins use the remaining amount. I haven’t downloaded the database to actually analyze, I’m just scanning the numerical values recorded values for memory load. Last night running with only “essential” plugins, the peak memory usage was 264 MB. I’ve turned on the normal theme and activated a few more plugins, including the “donations” plugin (because people asked.)
I’ll continue monitoring through the next few days, but it does look like the blog can operate normally at a cost of $20/month. (I am also looking at Habari to see how that works. I uploaded that to another folder, but I need to do a few tests to examine how much memory page loads draw with that software. I’ll report back for the curious.)
Update 2: Sept 30 Individual page loads with Habari are using approximately 35% the memory used by WordPress.
Comment to see time stamp when I came in from mowing lawn.
I noted that your tip jar has been missing for a while…. Why not ask your many frequent posters to help with the tab. I sure would, adn I think other would too. How much could a 800 Mbyte or 1.6G byte limit cost?
Steve: 800 Mbyte costs $40/month. It’s pretty linear above $15/month, which is the cost for being on a virtual private network. Right now, it’s looking like the memory hog is WordPress.
I know I can ask for money. But it seems unwise to be flushing $420 a year down the toilet when I can get a lot of the functionality with free hosting or nearly free hosting at WordPress. That said– I prefer self hosting for the flexibility. So, I need to make a decision here pretty soon.
I took the tip jar down when I was reducing plugins because Dreamhost suggested the problem was plugins. I think that was once true. But I think that’s changed. I read quite a few blog posts complaining for memory issues after the upgrade to 2.8. The number of people wondering seems to be increasing, with some of the more computer literate starting to hunt around for other blog software.
So….
But really, I need to get this dealt with because I can spend time trying to fiddle with plugins/platforms etc. or I can write blog posts. I can’t really do both.
I did get Supercache to make static files for all the old posts. It should serve static files to all the ‘bots and strangers. (You might not see them though.) That should also reduce the memory usage because, really, a lot is ‘bots.
There are an infinite number of suggested alternatives all of which are supposed to “help”. The difficulty is figuring out which ones really do help, an which ones are “safe” in the sense that I don’t risk totally screwing up the entire site in a way that would take it down for a week while I’m trying to figure out what the heck I did. (For example: I worry a bit about enacting changes that would permit php to be precompiled. I worry less about running a WP plugin that creates static files. If I knew more, I might be happy to make the server mods to precompile php, but I don’t know more.)
Lucia,
Are you using wordpress hosting service?
Jeff-
No. I self host. I like self hosting because it’s more flexible. But… each fresh page load is requiring about 20-30 MB memory. When people are talking, the pages refresh a lot and I get quite a few simultaneous loads.
But I might be moving to WordPress hosting. At $20/month, I’d rather self host. But if it gets to much more, I’d rather go to WordPress hosting.
I have no doubt that everyone here would prefer you to be writing blog posts rather than fiddling with ‘plugins/platforms etc’.
Is there no one here who can advise based on expertise?
I am painfully aware that this is easy for me to say since I do not have the relevant skills and will not be doing the helping. Even so?
The simple theme actually looks better to me…
Your problem is dreamhost.
If you really want a VPS, try http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/VirtualServer.
I have also had decent luck with bluehost shared hosting at $7/month. It handles a lot more than 20 clients at a time.
Steve– I may be changing themes. But my theme was already pretty simple so I don’t think the theme is the issue. I just wanted to take that out of the equation.
Punch My ticket– I’ll look at how much memory blue host provides at $7/month. How much traffic — most especiall– conversation– does your blog get? (Examples so I can see?).
Startling news. Lucia, I have discovered that memory usage is directly correlated to co2. There is no doubt and we have consensus. We can see that as co2 emissions go up, memory usage also rises. Coincidence?! I think not!
Punch–
I phoned Bluehost. The service guy said if I get the $7 plan, they will throttle at the level of memory I am drawing– just like Dreamhost. (This does not surprise me. )
I’ll need to compare all the features at the 1-1 site to dreamhost. It looks like it’s cheaper on the memory side. I’ll have to compare the other features to make sure I don’t have a problem on something different (cpu? etc.)
Re: Dr. Shooshmon, exterminator, phd. ,
That would be very unfortunate since CO2 concentrations are not under my direct control.
I think I’ll have made a decision about Habari in a few days. I’m contacting some people who might help me pick suitable plugins. Habari definitely takes 1/3rd the memory per page creation. It uses about the same CPU per page creation (but CPU isn’t really an issue anyway.) They have fewer plugins– but I don’t really use that many. There is a preview comment plugin (whoo hooo!)
They have a host of plugins just to monitor memory, cpu etc. So, the dumb user (i.e. me) can quickly see how adding any particular plugin is going to affect CPU draw, and memory. I saw two cache plugins– but I need to learn more about those.
For the time being, I’m going to be popping $20/month and continue using the WordPress software. But it may be that if I switch to Habari, I’ll be able to go back to the $7/month shared hosting! (I actually loaded Habari in a “super secret” directory. I told two people the address so they could take a look. I will htaccess block if my server logs indicate a lot of people (or bots)
guess.. erhmm“reverse engineer” the location and visit it. But otherwise, I am installing plugins and checking to see if the import plugin fully worked.)Lucia,
In your evaluation of cost of the various features of your wonderful blog, please consider the benefits of the recent comments listing.
A lot of intelligent people comment here and it is a real boon to be able to look at recent comments and see what’s going on.
j ferguson–
I agree recent comments is essential. But… the plugin is temporarily buggy. I’ll go turn it on right now though.
The WordPress plugins I consider essential:
* Spam filtering in a way that is invisible to users (no captcha etc.)
* recent comments in sidebar.
* caching (Saves CPU and memory; is invisible to users.)
Very useful:
User can subscribe to a comment thread.
User can either preview comments or edit them.
Contact form that filters spam.
If you have other favorites, let me know.
Recent comments should now show.
Lucia
With Bluehost also. Try some SEO tools (search in wordpress widgets) they should speed your site up a bit. I had a similiar problem at twawki where it got real slow but after reading, talking, techies etc SEO (search engine optimisation) found that it uses a lot less data and loads a lot quicker
Also get your own ISP ($2/m) it means you are not sharing your ISP with dozens of other sites
Lucia, shop around for hosting. I suspect you’re paying way more than you need to.
$6/ month Reseller
Or here for Hosting Offers
Twaki–
SEO is great if you want to get more search engine traffic. But I’m confused why SEO tools would speed up my site. What SEO tools did you use to speed up your site?