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Comment by MediaBaron on June 14, 2010 at 12:25pm

This was NOT a caching problem. I have very good caching in place on my site, I've sustained tens of thousands of real pageviews in the course of hours with my site not going down. We're talking like over 40K pageviews over a half a day.

The problem was related a little to hotlinking but mostly due to web attacks probing my site for exploits. I hardened my site's directories, denied some offending domains in my htaccess file and have gotten it under control.

I know the first reaction is to tell folks to cache but in my case what I needed to do was way beyond that.

WP-Cache is outdated and should not be used. SuperCache is better, but even better yet is a combo of HyperCache and DB Cache Reloaded. HyperCache will cache page contents while DBCR will cache database files. The combo is really excellent.

W3 Total Cache is also good but can be daunting to set-up all the controls. Plus it may not be fully compatible with my host which uses NFS for its file format on the servers.

If you want to check-out how secure your WordPress install is visit:
http://sucuri.net/?page=scan

And run your domain through the scanner. You may be a bit surprised. I hardened my site so the only real info it returns is that I'm on Apache, hosted by Dreamhost and am using the WP theme Gazette. All of which you can easily find out by looking at Whois or via the page source code.

I urge any of you WP users to run your site through that scanner. They even have tips on how to harden your site. Do it now, don't wait.

Comment by Paul Graydon on June 14, 2010 at 11:43am

I'm inclined to play it safe. You never know if your site is going to be slashdotted/redditted etc. There is no real harm in running it on even your smallest blog, so you might as well put it there "just in case". Better that than suddenly find your webhost asking you to take your business elsewhere!

Comment by Rob Bertholf on June 14, 2010 at 11:40am

Hi Paul, I also use caching on larger wordpress sites, very helpful!

Comment by Paul Graydon on June 14, 2010 at 11:38am

plugins like wp-cache and wp-supercache are essential for any wordpress blogger. 99% of the time you're dealing with what can be static content. The only time that's different is on the 1% or so of sites that are getting dozens of comments per minute. Even then the archive is to all intents and purposes static. No point wasting server and end users time generating the page each time :)

Comment by MediaBaron on June 13, 2010 at 10:45pm

No more memory or cpu load problems for me on my WordPress site Hawaii247.com Had to do a crapload of updates to php code in my theme that I customized and hardened my WP install.

WP is humming right along again. Now I'll have to see what breaks with WP3.0

Comment by MediaBaron on May 7, 2010 at 1:07pm

I assume by now everyone has heard about WordPress being hacked on DreamHost and GoDaddy servers. http://www.wpsecuritylock.com/breaking-news-wordpress-hacked-with-z...

Comment by MediaBaron on May 3, 2010 at 12:15am

I have look at and considered Drupal, I've done some installs and have worked up some test sites with it. Even Drupal could be run better on Nginx rather than Apache server.

A long term solution would probably be to move away from WordPress or Drupal onto a more publishing based CMS.

We'll have to see what WordPress 3.0 and Drupal 7.0 pulls out of the hat.

One of the big problems with these CMS solutions is not so much the scaling on the client side, that's easy enough to fix using caching and CDN. But it's supporting content generation on the admin side of things.

On tsunami day a couple months ago we were slammed with over 40K hits in a very short time. We never went down and we just kept serving up pages. WordPress can handle the load if set-up properly.

Comment by Rob Bertholf on May 2, 2010 at 11:56pm

Hi Baron,
Have you considered Drupal? I have found Drupal to be much more robust when dealing with heavier sites. Check out http://GetPantheon.com for performance based Drupal hosting. I spoke at DrupalCon SF a few weeks ago at the Moscone center in San Fran on SEO and was able to sit in on Josh Koenig's amazing presentation on Mercury and Drupal performance hosting.

Again, I am a huge WordPress fan, but when you are looking to step it up a notch, Drupal may be the solution.

Comment by MediaBaron on May 2, 2010 at 6:47pm

Aloha Rob. I've already hosted many WordPress sites and like you I think WordPress is a great CMS.

But I'm looking for more performance out of the current WordPress site I have which is a dynamic site. I'm on a Virtual Private Server for more control and am quite a bit beyond the typical WordPress user. Here's my site www.hawaii247.com

I'm probably asking for this info in the wrong place as I'm looking to connect with some heavy duty WordPress administrators, folks who don't just create WordPress sites but those who get elbows deep into the bits and bytes.

But then again I'm probably asking at the wrong time too as all the WP gearheads are at WordCamp in SF. ha

aloha,
Baron

Comment by Rob Bertholf on May 2, 2010 at 5:45pm

I have many WordPress sites hosted with GoDaddy, very inexpensive and only positive reviews. I recommend the Deluxe Linux Hosting package, you can host up to 25 WordPress sites for $7/month. Their control panel has a 1click install for WordPress as well which is nice!

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