Sometimes users turn to our technical support with a complaint about the operation of the site, as well as the speed of loading site scripts.
In turn, these users are trying to convince technical support that there were no changes in the site script configuration and everything worked stably until a certain point in time.
In order to determine what is the cause of the server failure, technical support staff first of all check the total load on the server and if the total load (load average) on the server does not exceed the allowable rate - while the speed of the rest of the sites is much higher than our problem site, in this case, we can assume that the problem is on the part of the client site, first of all it concerns the site scripts.
The main reasons for the appearance of load on the site:
1. An error in the site's caching system, which led to the creation of more pages and as a result, each time the search engine accesses, a load is created on the site and the server.
2. There was a violation in the structure of the database that your site uses.
Sudden power outages of the computer, the actions of computer viruses and other types of malware, user errors, errors in the software, and the actions of intruders can damage the internal structure of the site database files
3. Other reasons: traffic to your resource has increased.
If you have not made any changes to your site and suddenly received an email from our technical support about creating a load on the server, you need to follow all the instructions to prevent the load and optimize the site.
In the letters we send, we always try to inform you in detail what exactly creates the load on the server and provide a list of all scripts and processes that are associated with the load.
You should take measures already in accordance with the data indicated in the received letter.
Most often, the load from scripts is created in the case of using outdated versions of CMS systems, as well as their components and plugins. The most popular CMS systems that create a load on the server are Joomla and WordPress.
After analyzing 100 sites running on CMS Joomla, it was concluded that 79% of them do not use the latest versions of their CMS system, for Wordpress users this figure was 71%.
In addition, sometimes even regularly changing scripts can cause a load on the server. If you make even minor changes to the configuration of scripts (in the absence of knowledge on the development and configuration of scripts), this can adversely affect the operation of the site, and in general, the load on the entire physical server.
In this case, if technical support sends you a notification about the creation of a load from your site, you first need to remember what recent changes you made to the script configuration, then analyze your site logs to analyze the errors indicated in the logs.
If it is not possible to independently optimize the scripts of your site, you need to contact the developers of these scripts or personal programmers.
Usually problems with the site, caused by a lack of resources to execute the script, occur on CMS systems, where the main file is index.php, through which the content of the site and all its modules are loaded.
In this case, the user needs to check all the site modules connected to it, and also try to disable those modules that use the most site resources.
First of all, you need to disable the following modules if your site is running on the Joomla CMS system:
1) disable site search, i.e. search in all sections of the site (for example, Search - Web Links, Search - Contacts, etc.).
Instead, it is better to use the site search provided by Google and Yandex.
2) disable all editors except the one you use for work
3) disable the module Content - Code Hightlighter (GeSHi) (Code highlighting in articles) - by default, this plugin in Joomla is usually disabled.
In addition, you need to check the site template, as sometimes it can be loaded with graphics and a lot of java scripts. In the case when the site takes a lot of time to generate pages, while the content of the pages almost never changes, you can generate the page once and save it to a file, and on new accesses give data from this file using the caching function.
To reduce the load, you can use the built-in cache of your CMS system (for example, Joomla). Enabling caching will definitely increase the page loading speed of the site, as well as reduce the load on the server from the site. Caching also needs to be enabled in the settings of your website modules. A standard SEF can also positively affect the operation of the site, increase its security and increase the loading of the site to a higher level.
You also need to check the site database and clean it from old extensions. Periodic we need to optimize the site database through PhpMyadmin, after creating a backup copy of the site database. In order to avoid problems with the site in the future, you need to use only optimized graphic and multimedia files, it is advisable not to use images from other sites, but add only from your server.
