I'm dealing with a WordPress site integrated with WooCommerce that keeps spiking to 100% CPU on a shared hosting environment (using cPanel with a 2GB RAM limit). Here's what I have:
- WordPress version: 6.9
- WooCommerce is active
- Using the Porto theme along with Slider Revolution
The site is experiencing extremely slow First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) times, averaging between 15–25 seconds. I also run into random 507 Insufficient storage errors, which seem related to the RAM. Here are the steps I've already taken to address the issues:
- Disabled WP cron in the wp config
- Turned off LiteSpeed cache (it feels slightly faster without it)
- Disabled most plugins one by one to identify the load issue.
Any suggestions on how to stabilize the site?
5 Answers
If the slow load times persist, it’s a good idea to do a code audit. Ensure there isn’t a poorly optimized theme or plugin causing the issue. This can often be overlooked but can significantly impact performance.
It could be that a hack has led to a lot of spam pages being created on your site. You should add rules to your robots.txt file to block bots from accessing those spam pathways. Most legitimate bots follow those rules. Also, check Google Search Console to use the Removals tool and get those URLs out of search results as soon as possible.
You might have cryptominer malware on your site. My suggestion is to wipe everything and restore from a backup if you have one. Just make sure to clean the site thoroughly before restoring it!
Honestly, getting a better hosting plan could work wonders. Consider switching to a host like MDDHosting, KnownHost, or Nixihost. They have a good reputation for handling such setups.
You might want to check which HTTP server you’re using and how your database is set up. It’s also useful to check system processes with tools like top, htop, or btop to get an insight into CPU usage. Disabling plugins is good, but consider if you might actually need more caching rather than less.
I took over this website from someone else since I'm responsible for its upkeep, but I need to fix the LCP issue first. Regarding hosting, do you think 2GB of RAM is enough for a typical setup? Thanks for your input!