I recently moved WindowsObserver to a new web host that offered me a hosting plan that fell between the standard Shared Hosting model and a Virtual Private Server (VPS).
This new plan is a Business Pro option that is still Shared Hosting but with only 80% of the normal number of accounts on the shared server. That in turn means more resources for each individual site and therefore a quicker website for visitors.
My new host also has a clever method for dealing with sites that are consuming too many resources and that is CPU Throttling. This process works just like it sounds – use too many resources and your site gets a chunk of processing power taken away. The site will still work but will be noticeably slowed down.
I like this because it means neighboring sites are held accountable for what they are using and others are not penalized due to that excessive use.
When I first got moved over to the new host my site was being throttled a lot. Main culprit was MySQL database queries and I needed to easily discover the plugins and/or scripts that were causing the issues.
During a chat with my new host I was introduced to a plugin in the WordPress Plugin Gallery called P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) and it was authored by GoDaddy.
This plugin is superb and gives you a great indication of what your site is doing when it is accessed by public visitors or an admin in the WordPress Admin area.
This plugin creates a profile of your WordPress site’s plugins’ performance by measuring their impact on your site’s load time. Often times, WordPress sites load slowly because of poorly configured plugins or because there are so many of them. By using the P3 plugin, you can narrow down anything causing slowness on your site.
I have now managed to cut MySQL queries on my site by nearly 50% and got rid of the biggest culprits that were impacting my site and causing it to be throttled.
The biggest offender was the WordPress Jetpack plugin built by Automattic themselves.
By the way – the throttling has ended!
