BE AWARE OF: Your Host, WordPress Plugins, CPU Load and being BANNED from your own website!
Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, January 21, 2008 – 11:12 pm
This is something all bloggers and webmasters should really know about so you do not have to live through what I did - 7 days of your website(s) being offline.
This is the story behind how I was banned from my own website, Just Creative Design, and how it was brought down or ’suspended’ by overloading my host provider’s CPU through the over use of my website and Wordpress Plugins and I want to raise awareness of this, so this does not happen to you.
I will recount the story as it happened of JCD being suspended and then restored along with commentary and advice along the way.
Jan 14th - All my websites are down!
When I realised my sites were down (they went to an advertising page instead of my page) I really did not know what was wrong and in the back of my mind I thought that I had been hacked just like how David Airey was, last month, but it wasn’t because I had taken his advice and checked my Google Filters and all was clean.
After this I went pretty frantic and emailed all the people I could (my hosts, their support them, my domain name host provider and also their support team - in total 4 emails).
I received pretty instant replies (between 2mins and 4 hours) from 3 of the 4 contacts however none of these could help me and told me to contact my hosts (of which I had already done). I had to wait 1.5 days for their first reply.
Jan 15th - First Contact, 1.5 Days Later
They sent me this email (see below) on the 15th of January with a very brief and vague reason telling me why the site was down and what I had to do to rectify it - they did not tell me HOW to do it and this is where the problem was and what took up so much time.
It has come to our attention (by the server not responding due to a high load) that your domain is in violation of our AUP/TOS by way of the following domain: justcreativedesign.com
justcreativedesign.com was disabled for overloading server with index.php processes.
justcreativedesign.com had to be disabled in order for the server to work. If justcreativedesign.com was not disabled, all domains on the entire server including your own domain would have remained inaccessible.
To get your site enabled, contact Emailed Removed and state your plan of action to resolve this issue and prevent it from reoccurring.
If this should happen again after the site has been enabled, the domain will need to be permanently removed in order to maintain the integrity of the server that hosts many other sites.
If you don’t know how to fix your script from using so much of the CPU, you should begin looking for a dedicated server or virtual private server.
As you can see, I really had no idea what the problem was so I went out and did a bit of research.
Jan 15th & 16th - 303 Redirection & Lots of Research
At this time I really had no idea what the problem was so I put a 303 temporary redirection on my website to point to an error message, hosted on a friends account, telling my readers that I was having some technical difficulties - doing this took 2 days for the nameservers to propagate, meaning, for 2 days I still had that annoying advertising message on my site.
Naturally after I received the email above, I wondered what it was all about, so before I replied, I set off and did a bit of research. I came to realise a small handful of people have had the same problem. The best resource and where I learned the most on CPU Load and Wordpress, was on the forum of HostGator (A leading hosting company) on Blogging, Wordpress and CPU Load. I would highly, highly, recommend to everyone, to read this whole article as you won’t regret it - I sure wish I knew about it before my site went down.
Research Conclusions & What You Should Know!
Nearly All Hosting Providers have rules about database usage (CPU Load).
This is something that nearly all hosting providers do not display anywhere on their site, and generally keep it quite disclosed unless specifically asked. You should ask your provider about your CPU Load limitations.
What is CPU Load you ask? Generally it is the amount of open maximum connections that your site can have and how much of a servers resources you may use by having all these connections used at one time. These open connections can come in a number of ways… For example, having a large spike from a social media site like Digg or by having a script or plug-in ‘go crazy’ or by having an error in your programming.
When one of these things happen you use up a lot of your host providers resources and as an example; if you use 90% of your server’s resource for over 30 seconds (a long time) your account would be suspended because this leaves no resources for the hundreds of other sites that are hosted on the same server. If this is unclear, read this article.
Wordpress Plugins are bad for CPU Load
Using too many plugins on Wordpress is a very bad thing… even if you try them out then deactivate them, it still leaves bits of code in your programming which chews up bandwidth and loading speed, so the solution to this is to have a spare Wordpress blog that you can test scripts and plugins out on.
Another thing I learned is that some plugins can conflict with one another and cause the script(s) to go crazy and repeat on itself and cause an enormous CPU Load on your server. This is why testing on another blog is perfect!
During my research I also found out that some plugins use more CPU Load than others and make your website slower to load. In particular; Recent Comment Plugins, Top Commentator Plugins, some spam protection plugins and even WP-Cache use a lot of CPU Load.
Serra from HostGator comments on CPU Load and account suspension…
“Most of the suspensions I’ve seen have been the result of scripts that have gone nuts or sites that are simply too big to be on a shared account. Shared accounts are geared toward sites that see a moderate amount of traffic, with few peaks in traffic. Those with heavy database operations or traffic spikes don’t really belong in the shared environment. Basically, for $6.00 a month, you need to have a normal website. For $78.00 a month, you can go crazy, but you need to pay for the craziness with the higher fee.”
So just be careful with wordpress plugins and test them out on a spare blog first.
Jan 18th - I Reply to Host Provider & More Waiting.
Anyway after 303 redirecting and all of my research (about a days worth) I replied to my host providers stating what I would do to resolve the issue and then 1.5 days later they came back with an email saying “Your website has been enabled“. I had to change my nameservers back to their original position and then I had to ‘wait up to 3 days‘ for my website to propagate back again.
Jan 20th, 21st - “Website Enabled” but not for me.
As I said above, they emailed me saying my website had now been enabled and it was, my website was now back up and running! (yay) - But unfortunately not for me - It was not working on my own computer at all so I emailed them again asking why everyone else was getting the site and I wasn’t. They replied:
“Propagation is the process in which the nameserver information in your Registrar’s database is passed to the 13 international root nameservers and then on to millions of ISP’s, routers, and DNS cache engines all of which will update their own dns tables with the new information whenever they choose to update. As you can see propagation is not controlled by any one company. Please wait about 3 days.”
But I knew this was not the problem so I contacted them yet again and this time they said they needed my IP, and for me to do a trace route.
I did what they asked and then they replied saying.
“121.210.114.XXX was blocked by firewall. It has been unblocked.”
Hey presto, I am now allowed back onto my own website! But this meant only one thing… I had just been banned from my own website.
Jan 21st - Banned From My Own Website and Why?
So after receiving the last email, I realised that I was just banned from my own website! The reason behind me being banned is a mystery however after my research I could only bring it down to 3 things.
- I was visiting my own website too often and was considered a spammer. (I was doing a lot of plug in testing and unfortunately I was not on a spare blog so this could be a valid reason.)
- A plugin went crazy in conflict with another plugin and caused an over load of CPU power.
- A social media spike (my stats don’t show this though).
As an educated guess, I believe it was a combination of the first two points but only god knows the real answer.
Anyway, now Just Creative Design (and my other website - E-mail Signature Designs) are online again and I have full access to them and my emails and hopefully this ordeal is completely over.
What you should do now.
After this week long ordeal I want you to learn from my misfortunes so that this does not happen to you, so I believe you should be doing these things;
- Share this article with as many people as you can (a blog post would be great - if not, any submissions to social media sites would be just as fine.)
- Contact your own host provider and ask about your CPU Load limitations.
- Uninstall the plugins you don’t need and declutter your blog for faster loading times. Remember the plugins that I said cause the most CPU Load.
- Create a secondary identical blog for you to test your scripts and plugins in.
- If you have not already, as stated above, I highly recommend you to read this article on blogging, wordpress and CPU load.
- Make sure you know ALL the contact details of your host provider, domain name provider, and their support teams and have them easily on hand. Ensure that all your contact details are correct in each of these places (I had a wrong email in one which delayed the process by half a day).
- Ensure You Backup Your Blog - Luckily I had been doing this automatically every day.
Thanks
Thanks everyone so much for those who have emailed / contacted me at the start and throughout this ordeal: Lauren, David, Vivien, Niyaz PK and for those , who followed my progress in the comments of these two posts.
I know some other people have tried contacting me but seeing though I had no access to my domain or emails I haven’t received everyone’s emails so sorry about that.
Anyway, hope this helps you avoid this problem in the future and if anyone has had this happen or know someone who has, I would love to hear about it.
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Top 5 Time Saving Plugins to Make Blogging A Breeze
Written by Jacob Cass on Saturday, January 12, 2008 – 11:56 am
These 5 6 very handy, time saving plugins are a must have for any blogger out there who wants to save time - and I mean a lot of time! I really wish I knew about these when I first started blogging… as you can see in my very first blog post: 20 WordPress Plugins You Must Have I seem to have left out 4 of the time saving plugins listed below but needless to say, they are there now!
1. Better Comments Manager
This is my favourite plugin that not many people know about and strangely enough is hardly mentioned anywhere! This plugin allows you to reply to your comments from within the Wordpress Admin Panel - you no longer have to go to the post to reply! You can also view all comments in your admin panel based by posts!
2. Admin Drop Down Menu
The Admin Drop Down Menu should be bundled with Wordpress on installation, I would like to know why it isn’t! It eliminates the need for double clicking on the Admin screens. It allows you to see the second level menu just by placing your mouse over a main menu. You can view the demo here.
3. TinyMCE Advance
TinyMCE Advance is for those of you who use the visual text editor in WordPress… This handy little plugin adds 40 extra buttons & options to the toolbar, which is now two rows plus one hidden row. It does take a bit of effort to get used to it but it is well worth it!
4. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is a simple and easy administration back end to handle multiple images for your blog and it has gallery and album functionality. Check out my portfolio to see it in action. The best feature of this plugin is that you can upload multiple files at the same time - even if they are in a zip file.
5. SRG Clean Archives
SRG Clean Archives is one of many archiving systems out there, but this one is clean, uniform and search engine friendly and it can display on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. This archiving system is automatic and a great way for you (and your visitors) to overlook your whole blog at one time - saving you and them time by not digging around in your website. You can see it in action on my archives page.
6. Easy Admin Access
A day after posting, I found this great plugin that adds an admin access bar that runs along the top of your blog when you’re logged in, which provides links to the dashboard, new post and profile pages, as well as the option to log out. Very time saving!
Are there any other time saving plugins that deserve to be in this list?
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Do you own an American or Australian Blog?
Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 4:07 pm
Judging from my stats, the majority of my readers are from America however I wish to help you few Aussies out there as well. If you own an Australian or American blog, there are communities out there that help you out!
Australia: I want to bring awareness to Blogpond - an Australian Blog community as they are there to help you out in your blogs pursuit of happiness. I have actually just recently been added to this community and in the short future wish to be in the top 100 Austalian Blogs. At the time of writing, they have 236 Australian blogs listed in their community.
And just so you know blogs are ranked by:
AU = Alexa Rank in Australia
X = Global Alexa Rank
T = Technorati Rank
America: I also want to bring awareness to a similar service based in America called Best American Blogs (though it doesnt seem to modereated to me). You can submit your site to be part of the American community and get your own ranking. At the time of writing, they have just under 450 American blogs listed in their community.
Other Communities:
There are heaps of other communities out there that are generic such as the ones I am a member of below.
- MyBlogLog - Blogging Community
- BlogCatalog - Blogging Community
- LinkedIn - A business networking website.
- Del.icio.u - My bookmarks.
- Digg - Websites I find useful and great.
- DesignFloat - A digg like website but only on design.
- Technorati - Blogosphere
- SpicyPage - Share your favorite sites or blogs.
Anyway, I just wanted to help the communities that support you.
What is your Error 404 Page?
Written by Jacob Cass on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 – 12:06 am
Do you ever visit pages that don’t exist any longer, have moved to a new server or have never existed at all?
This is when you get an Error 404 Page.
Once you’ve missed your intended destination, either through a bad or outdated link, or a typo in the page you were hoping to reach, you’ll hopefully get an internal error message from the server.
However, by default these messages aren’t that helpful - after all, you are looking for the information, not for the reason you can’t find this information. Fortunatly, you can style server error messages just the way you style any other pages.
It’s not only a more elegant way to deal with errors, but is also extremely useful for keeping users on your web-site, finding new clients or communicating with the old ones.
Check out my error page here (opens in new window)
You can see that I provide helpful suggestions underneath a creative and humorous image that runs with my sites theme.
So how do I create an error 404 page?
Visit this great 404 Tutorial site.
Some tips for creating your Error 404 Page
1. Use appealing visual elements.
2. Provide alternatives for navigation.
3. Offer an overview of possibly related posts.
4. Communicate with your visitors.
5. Be sincere and cool.
6. Be user-friendly.
7. Don’t provide too many options.
8. Don’t provide too little options.
For some great inspiration visit Smashing Magazine’s 404 Design Showcase.
Customise Your Wordpress Login Screen
Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, November 29, 2007 – 5:30 pm
Did you know you can customise your Wordpress login screen? Above you can see my modified version or you can check out the live version here.
You may be looking for the Wordpress 2.5+ version?
This is more important for blogs with multiple authors or blogs designed for clients.
The process is way to easy - You create two images (login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif) and then put them into your wp-admin/images/ folder from your wordpress installation.
For a full tutorial on how to do this visit Asara Myshan or BinaryMoon.
For some inspiration visit this Flickr photo album.
It’s the attention to detail in your work that makes all the difference when you deal with your clients. If you have designed a wordpress blog for a client I would highly recommend making this small, yet important, inclusion. For myself, its not as important as I am the only one who writes on this blog, however for those with multiple authors it surely is a must.
Have you got any login screens you want to share?
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