I just spent a couple of hours reloading my images at lower res. Quite a long ways to go, but on the whole, I’d say they look OK.
If this solves the load on the CPU problem, dandy. If not, it looks like I will need to move to another server.
I’ve reloaded all of the February A Distant Soil pages, but now have to do January. I also have to redo all the older posts (ugh.)
The site does seem to be loading faster. If you guys have no complaints about image quality, I am cool with the lower res.
Three hours later…Who am I kidding? they look like crap. I can’t stand me when I try to be Pollyanna. The low res pages look like crap. There, I said it.
x
c
It might not have anything to do with your images. Some programs (particularly freeware web stuff), due to the way they are programed, make multiple unneeded requests of the server in order to run. A lot of this is due to bad programming. The V-Hive (message board, using the free beehive software) had the same issue. The owner (Nick Locking) had to re-program it to reduce the stress on the servers as he had a similar situation. I’m not a programmer so I can’t tell you for sure, but this could be your issue.
They’re a bit blurry — especially on the lettering — but readable enough.
Hi, Colleen! I am not sure if the reload of the images at lower res would make any difference with your CPU load problem. Howeer, the site is indeed loading faster due to the reduced images.
I had problemas with CPU load some months ago in my store website (and I didn’t notice any significant difference in my traffic). By definition, CPU Load is the number of processes waiting to access the CPU, and the load is influenced (for example) by connections to MySQL databases, queries, etc…
I just checked the processess and tried to identify the processes that were increasing the server load. In the end, I noticed that it was related to a security problem and a spammer found a way to use one of the store accounts for mass emailing.
I think your host may be able to tell you which processes are the ones that are causing the high load, and from that information, trying to pinpoint the source of the problem. If it is something external or security-related, you may risk moving your hosting to another ISP and experience the same load problems again eventually.
Hm. I am not hearing of other Comic Press creators with this problem, so hm…I’m just tired and frustrated.
BTW, an except from the server guy which might shed some light:
“No matter where you go, the hosting company is going to take note of the high cpu use. Its a programming wordpress thing that is chewing up cpu like crazy. Maybe its the new theme? I don’t know. I’m not asking you to move. I’m am asking you to find out what the problem is with your wordpress blog and get it fixed. I understand its sunday. Do your best to relay your concern to your tech persn and see what can be done. I mentioned dedicated because litterally with the high cpu your site is using currently, you need dedicated to continue at this level of cpu usage.”
I know it is sort of stupid to try to give some advise from a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, without knowing all the details… but could the server guy tell you which processes are chewing the CPU? Are those MySQL processes? Because the site may have a defective script or something that is running SQL queries like crazy.
Here’s what he has been writing me:
“I do believe your website is battering my server very good now adays. It used to not do that, but since you put your block on the home page, each time someone hits your home page, it literally uses anywhere from 10-20% cpu. (on a quad core server!)”
Now, his first thought was that all my pages were loading on the home page, but we actually limited that to 5 posts. So that was obviously not it.
Today I got this:
“please contact your designer, whoever set this up for you and ask them if the home page can be LESS mysql/cpu/memory intensive.”
So, we immedaitely began reloading all the images at lower res. Don’t know if that fixed it, but I am sure it helped.
I was scanning at 150dpi jpg, which was using about 250 kb per image. Now I am saving for web at 72 dpi and using about 40-70 kb per image.
c
BTW, my stats show the kb usage per visit dropping by the minute.
I am not sure if that is because we are getting huge numbers of Neil Gaiman fans tuning in today and then not sticking around for very long, or if the image resolution reduction is having a major effect.
Yet again (then, I may be wrong) I suspect that something in the new site may be doing unnecessary MySQL Queries, which increases the load (and that’s why the server guys says about the page being less mysql/cpu/memory). What you have in the new site is just wordpress with comicpress? Do you have any additional plug in installed? That could be a possible reason…
Here you have a list of plugins that may increase Load:
http://comicpress.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2045&sid=6f5dcaa0156cfc38f416a8a06696cb87
I hope it helps! Kisses!
Thanks Roberto,
I am not seeing any of those plug ins on my site.
Also, I compared kb usage on the new site and over the last two years of the old one.
Right now, our kb usage per visit is running about 470. That is actually going down quite rapidly, which I am sure has something to do with our heavy traffic today, and the fact that we reduced all the images.
HOWEVER, comparing that to my kb usage last year, I see that early last year, with all the heavy art posting I was doing, we were using as much as 300 + kb per visit. Yet we were having NO problems with the server, even in months when we had unusually heavy traffic, heavier than this month (so far).
So, I am thinking you are right, there is some kind of script problem OR it is a problem with the ads. Because there’s no way the server should be having this problem with the average kb hit. Just reducing the size of the logo should have done the trick.
That said, if we can fix the problem, I will gladly reload the ADS comic pages at the higher res again. They look muddy to me at this res.
To be sincere, I also think the ADS comic pages look muddy now. And the number or kb per visit may be more related to the bandwidth usage than the server load. If you want, you can ask your tech guy to check the scripts, plugins (and yes, the ads).
I hope you solve it soon! Your time should be used to create beautiful stuff and not worrying about server usage!
Roberto, you are absolutely right. That is bandwidth usage. I have no idea how much cpu usage we are dealing with.
But if we can get this dealt with, I will gladly reload every single comic page. I do not like the new images. At all. One of the things that I loved the most about the new site was how crisp the black and white pages looked on the glowing screen. I can only imagine how muddy they look on a poor quality monitor.
The more I look at them, the more I hate the lower res.
Damn the lower res.
Damn it to hell.
Why not try shutting off ALL your plugins and checking with your hosting guy to see if that solves the problem? If it does, start turning them back on one by one, and check with him each time to see when the CPU load spikes – then you’ll know what’s causing the problem, and can look for similar but hopefully better plugin.
Well, that’s assuming we could get by without the Comic Press plug in. We can’t. But it’s a good suggestion.
ComicPress is a theme, not a plugin. I think.
There’s also a Comic Press manager plug in. Which I would not want to live without.
Ah, I see. Oh well.
No worries, I truly appreciate all the great advice and support here! I’ve learned a lot from you guys today.
And yeah, I don’t think it’s the res on the main image. At all.
No, Roberto is correct above – bandwidth and CPU load are different things. Your host would be complaining about something different if too many people were downloading files that were large enough to cause problems.
There’s probably something happening a lot that probably doesn’t need to be happening a lot (because of some piece of software that could be better written), and if you or your designer can figure out what, you can avoid the whole paying for a VPS thing. Maybe your host can tell you what the process is that’s hitting the CPU? Or maybe he has MySQL logs or something that someone could examine? I wish I could be more help, but I only really know enough to ask questions…
I do have access to mySQL logs, but I would not know how to read them. However, there’s no problem giving my web lady access.
I’ve got a call in to my designer and Comic Space and I am pretty sure we will have this cleared up right quick.
I really am utterly delighted with how helpful you all have been and I feel like I just got a crash computer course!
So, that’s interesting – these events should just be generating simple little GET requests. WordPress doesn’t generate these, the browsers of all your visitors do, when they click on links. Do you have any kind of plugin that tracks how many folks visit which pages? Maybe every time a resource is requested (a link is clicked on) the plugin is making unnecessary database calls to record the traffic?
Just a thought.
But I’m officially out of my depth, now.
No, we don’t have any plug ins like that. They are simply for graphics, like the Comic Press plug in.
And looking at the early returns on this new day shows that the actual usage is about 100 kb per visit. Which is nothing to tie up a cpu.
Well, that’s a measurement of bandwidth – orthogonal to CPU usage, I think. If, for each visit, 200 calls are made to the MySQL db, it doesn’t matter what the total size of the files being served out to each visitor are, the machine’s going to get bogged down.
Hi, Colleen! Did you find out the reason of the high load? Did you try to deactivate scripts or adds? (everything except comicpress?) I hope you have it solved by now! Hugs!!!
I really don’t know. The Comic Space folks who set everything up made a backup today and were going over hosting options with me. I know they have some tech guy doing something. What I do not know.
Oh, one thing I did learn is that the ads are actually hosted on Comic Space’s servers.
Joey Manley of Comic Space suggested a wordpress plug cache that is helping. My server load is running around 1.25 (4 cpus) just now which is an improvement. It drops as low as .5.