Update: Thanks so much to everyone who very terrifically emailed and left comments to help me out!
I am not a technical person; I mean, I can program a bit in HTML but that’s about it. Everything beyond that is ridiculously out of my realm. Still, it’s been a learning experience!
According to my site, the former theme was the issue, making 56 or so SQL requests per load. I am keeping my bits crossed that this is the end of the site crashes.
For now, this is the theme, but I hope to suss that out in short order as I look at my options moving forward.
Thank you so so so so so so so much for helping me out. I’ll keep you posted! For now, enjoy (I hope) no down time. I’ll get the images back in as quickly as I can…
Don’t move back to blogger!
Blogger does have outages, and when it goes out, you have no way to get your site back, let alone get any help.
Look for another host – BlueHost is good – or I can host your site also, but I think BlueHost might be better for your needs.
Someone there can import your site from hostgator to BlueHost’s servers without too much trouble. I’ve done it myself several times now – moving wordpress from one place to another.
I’m guessing you’ve already written to HostGator support? If not, do so!
Tell them you want to be moved to a less crowded server. It’s likely that your site is lumped in with a lot of other sites and they are taking up too much bandwith and space so none of them are performing well.
If you need further help, let me know and I’ll see if I can do anything else.
I seriously suggest considering Bluehost if you’re going to switch hosts. I’ve never had any of my websites or my clients sites run into CPU issues there that could not be resolved (sometimes with an upgrade to the hosting plan sometimes just with code being optimized). Moving back to Blogger may totally wipe out your search engine presence for a second time which will get harder to recover from each time you do it. Moving to any new hosting provider with better resources for high traffic websites shouldn’t affect your search engine results.
Plugins can increase the strain on your servers. For a site your size, so can serving up the images and other static files, if they’re hosted onsite. (Are your images hosted with your blog, or do you have them on another network?)
On top of that, I just had an issue last week where my hosting site’s default PHP settings were causing problems. They walked me through changing it, and within 48 hours the problems “fixed” themselves. (If those settings are a known issue with site speed, why were they the default settings?)
Lemme know if you need more information about any of this!
You guys are the best! Thank you. I’m going to see what I can do on this end.
I am superbly frustrated right now. I deleted 300 images from the site in hopes of it making any difference. It didn’t even touch the issues.
Jenn– Thank you! I am asking about that now (we’ve been trying to suss out the issues for the last 2 weeks, to no avail). I need a permanent solution. There is no reason this should be happening. I appreciate your insight.
Blissful– you are so correct! I would hate to move again. I am this close to deleting the entire site and just calling it a day.
Frugal– We’ve cut back on more than half of the plugins, and I’m still having a serious case of the ass with the servers.
Thanks so much for your help. You are all positively wonderful! I know WordPress sites out there MUCH more blinged out than mine (and with more images and less problems). This has been such a hard week for me. I want to cook, damn it. I don’t want to deal with all of these site issues.
Hi. Please don’t delete it. I love it and so does so many others. I use pjlhosting.com and I have never had one problem and my site never goes down. It is also very very reasonable. I hope you will look into that. Plus, they are real, honest people. Blessings to you, Sheatina
Jamie,
I’m confused about why you’re still on shared hosting. I would think the problem has to do with your SUCCESS — that you’ve most likely outgrown your britches. (Sorry if that analogy flies in the face of the theme of The “Lighter” Side – I mean it in a positive way).
When you send out an email to a list your size, I’d imagine that your CPU does get taxed with all the hits to your site. I’m sure you have a list size that would cause most bloggers to drool…. (you send a lot of traffic to one of my clients, so I know that you must be doing well).
Looks like Panda kicked your butt in January? Ouch! Have you recovered from that? I’d be happy to take a peek at things if you need help from recovering from that, but maybe you’re already on your way. See here: https://screencast.com/t/L9SQmod2q7
Hostgator has an upgrade plan that behaves as a dedicated host for only $35/month. I’ve used that successfully in the past for high traffic sites and never had any issues…
Thanks for all you do — you’re a fun and valuable resource for those of us figuring out our bodies!
Becky
I’m a web developer and for all of my freelance stuff I usually use Dreamhost. They have AWESOME customer support and capabilities, plus I have never in 10+ years of using them had an outage that wasn’t caused by my own fault. They are pretty affordable too. You should have no problem at all running your WordPress site on their servers. If I can be any help, please let me know! You have certainly helped me out more than you know (OOPSIE ROLLS!!!).
So… as it turns out, my theme was making a ton of requests. I’m not sure how people run the theme unless CPU isn’t, in fact, an issue for their servers.
At one point, my former theme performed 56 MySQL queries.
So there you have it–it was the theme. So for the time being, while I still try to suss this out, I’m going to stick with the default WordPress theme and then I’ll try to make some pretties down the road.
Sheatina– Sorry for the extreme tantrum. By yesterday afternoon I was absolutely positively beside myself. This issue has been going on for some time and it’s been a learning experience, but damn it; I want to cook and create and visit with friends; not spend all my time with a broken website. If the site’s not benefiting you, it’s not benefiting me either. Thankfully, it’s up again, even if it’s not what I had hoped for.
Becky– I might look into the dedicated host. I just never knew I’d need one. Thank you for your help. I will keep you posted.
Moosie– Thank you for rocking it out! It seems like the theme’s the issue right now; if I can reduce the number of requests I might be able to make it a couple of days without a site crash! Now I have to upload pictures for 300 recipes again… They’re naked…
Thank you all so much for your help. this has been such a learning experience. Not a good one, but the weird stuff always seems to happen to me.
I was thinking along the lines of Becky. I’ve seen so many things that can bork a site!
But, in the interests of knowledge, what theme was it? I want to make sure I never, ever use it! I do a lot with the Genesis framework. In fact, I’m going to start creating child themes for it shortly (you change the child theme, so upgrades never require recreating parts or all of your site with a child theme). One of the very nice things about it is that the creators worked with one of the very best SEO people out there in creating it. And there is a huge support community in case things go wrong.
The theme ended up not being the issue, thankfully; it’s the hosting company and the amount of traffic I’ve been receiving. It’s kind of a mixed blessing…
See what happens when you’re a rockstar? It’s GREAT news, really!
So are you moving plans, or hosts?
Yes! Well, both. The switch is happening today. I hope.