Warning Will Robinson...

Just a word for any out there hosted on Elief who use the ocPortal SHOUTBOX block.

I found myself in trouble with Elief when they emailed me regarding my site "using an excessive amount of resources on the server".

I found out that "shoutboxes can use such a large amount of resources and cause problems for others on the server" One note about the SHOUTBOX block on my site, it had 15 visible messages. I have no idea whether 15 uses more resources than 5

The notice I got from Elief gave me the option of:
upgrading to a VPS (for me, that is about a $57 USD increase in my monthly hosting bill) or remove the SHOUTBOX block. I had 48 hrs.

Unfortunately I was on a 4 day family visit at the time the notice was given and as it turned out the 48 hrs expired before I got back to my email. I returnrd home to check my website and found a "SUSPENDED ACCOUNT" notice where my website used to be.

…anyway it did all get worked out with Elief and this by removing the shoutbox after they lifted my suspension.

Also in one of the emails I recieved from Elief, they stated that "ocPortal in general is a pretty heavy usage and we've been noticing some issues with the software lately that we are hoping to get resolved with an update to ocPortal."

I still find Elief a good host and plan to stay (a lot of time/energy invested to move) but I wanted to pass this on as an FYI.

Hey friendly,

I understand your being upset but I think if it was me I would make the move. I have been using ocPortal for several years and several sites all on the same host and all with the chat turned on. Never had a problem.

As to the hassle of moving, I checked the Elief site features and found that they use cPanel. If you move to another Host with cPanel the move could not be easier. Most hosts with cPanel even offer to do the transfer for you. When I moved my sites from my previous host to my current host they had all 23 of my domains transferred and running in less than 12 hours.

Rick, who is your host?

www.surpasshosting.com

Wow, very low cost hosting with way more space and bandwidth than where I am.

Yea that's what got me to move. I have the lowest reseller account and have had as many as 27 domains up and have never even got close to any of the limits.

I will say that it is not always the fastest on the net but it is also not the slowest. My suggestion is to get the cheap reseller account and just to a test install of ocPortal and see what you think. If you don't like it not big loss, if you do like it then it could be a solution.

Actually I just noticed they have a 90 day guarantee so no loss at all.

I should add that this is partly our fault. There has been an issue where the database size gets very large that I thought we'd got a fix out for, but apparently not. I can understand from Elief's point of view; I need to get a better workflow here for coordinating problem resolution with them before it becomes a customer service issue.

ocPortal.com - Entry: Cache table can get very large

Thank you Chris.

Will this make the SHOUTBOX block behave as far as resource usage on Elief's servers?

Hi,

Actually it's the menu's that were taking up database space. It might be they got confused about the shoutbox, I don't think that would be at fault at all here.

Greetings,

I just wanted to add that I have not had that kind of trouble from my host (TMD Hosting), and I have made extensive use of menus and the chat room. Instead, I oocasionallly get emails saying that the server they have me oon is to slow for my site so they are moving me to a faster or more powerful server, without a change to my plan or cost.

It seems to be happening again.

Woke up this morning and went to the computer to check the status of my website and I see my web hosts Account Suspended page displayed again where my website was. So I go to my account page on Elief's website to see if there was some notice explaining what had caused this action.

No message. I opened a support ticket to ask what had happened and in less than 2 hours I got their explanation.

Elief said

It looks like one of our admins suspended you due to excessive CPU usage (bold and italics supplied by me!). I will un-suspend the site but you may want to check your scripts and make sure they are all updated and working properly to avoid this from happening again.

Do you out there who host with Elief get these kind of suspensions too? I have had Elief as a host for less than nine months and been suspended twice.

Chris, what can be causing the "excessive CPU usage"?

I'm shocked they didn't contact you personally.

Below is a quote from: Elief Hosting Review | Elief Web Hosting Reviews

Some hosts offer Burst RAM & others prefer just to offer Guaranteed. Which solution do you offer & why?

We do not have any specific RAM or CPU limits, instead we like to have our staff monitor and focus on each individual account and communicate with our clients to find out the root cause of the problem and what we both can do to prevent it from happening.

That is the problem with most hosting companies today, they have no communication with their clients and would rather suspend a well paying client then work with them to figure out what the issue is. We find most of the time the problem is easily fixed by changing a badly written script or having the user optimize their code.



Guess you're not a well paying client

Thanks for pointing out the quote Eric, I hadn't reads it before

I'm astonished at their action in light of the interview quote but in Richards behalf I will say he was the one who replied to my inquiry and 'restored' my account, advising me see what is causing the excessive CPU usage.

Still it does seem like there are little admins running around suspending first and asking questions later …I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now that someone EVENTUALLY was going to CONTACT ME.

My host is somewhat the same way. I had one account that wasn't recurring and missed one payment. They suspended my account and never got ahold of me. I had to find out by going to my site.

So I think it's like that in most hosts…. Elief just wants to look good. No offense to their services, of course.

Eric (jokingly) said

Guess you're not a well paying client

Let me make one thing clear - No missed or late payments - all payments are automatically withdrawn from my bank account by the web host.

I believe myself to be  "a well paying client"

Eric continues to jokingly say said

So they would have contacted you first if you missed a payment.

Keeping on the CPU thingie… he said something about scripts? Are you using other scripts within ocPortal that might be causing it?

No outside scripts on my site to my knowledge (and I think I would (should) know), no RSS either, no SHOUTBOX (earlier so-said problem).

AFAIK pure ocPortal with minor tweeks.

I have a lot of gallery images and and individual galleries. I also use the MAIN_BANNER_WAVE block in several places. I mostly use them, limiting the display of 1 banner only. Don't know if that would be an issue - don't think so, but…

Well… I got jinxed. an ocPortal site I helped put together now got suspended due to high CPU! Edit: Chris, I had upgraded to the latest ocPortal when this happened. Could there be something in the upgraded software causing this? I'd hate to have to remove ocPortal and run another CMS for the site.