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Why does Oxwall CMS consume Excessive CPU Resources compared to other CMS Portals? | Forum

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Ebony Wood
Ebony Wood Aug 23 '13
I have received Notices from my webhost informing me that my website that was running Oxwall CMS is consuming excessive CPU resources (Cloud Cycles as they referred). They advised that I should do something soon or else they may ask me to upgrade to another package. 
I have a VPS Hosting package running 5 different websites. I am also in the process of testing other opensource CMS poratls found at www.opensourcecms.com. ;

On my server, 1st website uses PHPFOX CMS, 2nd uses Contenido, 3rd uses Social Engine CMS,  4th uses JAKCMS(Now upgraded and called Gecko CMS ) and the 5th uses Oxwall CMS.

So I decided to Investigate which of these CMS's uses the most CPU resources. I checked the number of members per website, compared it with the number of visitors per month and their corresponding band width consumption, and CPU usages.

Here are my conclusions on which of them consumed the highest CPU rates comparatively.

1 - Oxwall CMS
2 - Social Engine
3 - PHPFOX
4 - Contenido
5 - JAKCMS (JAKCMS is free Gecko CMS is not free )

Note that PHPFOX and Social Engine are not for free. Now I am in the process of trying and testing out other free open source CMS portals like concrete5 CMS Lepton etc.

Forget CMS portals like Joomla and Drupal. They have become too bloated and over commercialized. 

If any one has any experiences or opinions on my thoughts please post them out.

For OXWALL developers, is there something you guys and gals can do to reduce the un-proportionate CPU resource usage for oxwall CMS portal?
Evelyne
Evelyne Mar 26 '14
I've been having the same problem here... I changed the cron job to every 30 minutes, and have log sent to a text file instead of email, but I'm still getting off-the-charts reports on CPU usage, most likely from oxwall. Too bad!


ben
ben Mar 26 '14
How many plugins on your site ? how many member on your site? high user activity on your site will increase resources usage that's normal
Evelyne
Evelyne Mar 26 '14
Only the basic plugins, only 70 members, nobody uses them. I'll just uninstall it altogether. I was stupid enough to pay for 3 years hosting plan, now I'm stuck with them for another 2 years, unless I want to lose money (which I don't!) 


I have just backed up the whole thing and if I ever install it again I'll do from backup...


This is the email message I have just got from them. They keep pushing me into a more expensive plan, and considering the very little use of oxwall I've been having, I'm really just tired of this BS (from the hosting company):


"Considering that your website is running a social networking service with OxWall, a VPS may actually be your best option, which would involve moving to another host. While technically any developer should be able to cache the website to optimize it for use on any server, if your developer is incapable of this, we recommend looking into a VPS platform: http://www.webhostinghub.com/alternatives/

The reality is that this site is not compatible with shared hosting in its current state. The server is running Better Linux, which means that if one user (you, for example) has a temporary spike in resource usage, the server temporarily dedicates a limited amount of server resources to that user, while still giving the majority of the system's resources to the other users on the server. That makes it so your website does not negatively impact other users, but it does mean that you are seeing the impact of the high resource usage on your own account. I'm not going to ask you to upgrade, because honestly your website is beyond what the highest level package can effectively run without limits around 40% of the time (As you can see from the resource graphs). At this point, unless the DHBClub installation is removed, a VPS would be the best environment for your website. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Best Regards, Madeleine F. 877-595-4HUB (Toll Free) 757-416-6627 (Int'l) 24x7 EMAIL and PHONE Technical Support"



Erik
Erik Mar 26 '14
Same issue.. And I only have 5 members so far and it's just eating up all my resources. I will go without a site before I pay for a dedicated server.
Joseph
Joseph Mar 26 '14
I started using things like skysa for our instant chat and basically anything chat wise is third party because oxwall refuses to release the good stuff like their instant chat that runs on jabber that's only for their servers so yeah there is that its mainly instant chat I found that causes the issue and you want a decent hosting company I use arvixe and I don't have any issues with them
ross Team
ross Mar 27 '14
Are those 70 members active? Actually shared hosting is good just for the start, like 5 to 10 active members, then you definitely need to upgrade, even using the default plugins only. 


Can you guys, please contact your hosting providers and request statistics which part of the Oxwall software or what exactly causes this high CPU usage? 

Kenneth
Kenneth Mar 28 '14
Quote from ross Are those 70 members active? Actually shared hosting is good just for the start, like 5 to 10 active members, then you definitely need to upgrade, even using the default plugins only. 


Can you guys, please contact your hosting providers and request statistics which part of the Oxwall software or what exactly causes this high CPU usage? 


I must agree with him, I learnt the hard way even upgrading your shared server won't cut it. If you want a social network shared servers just won't cut it unless it's during "creation" phase after which you will need VPS which is a decent price cut between shared and dedicated. dedicated servers is what you will need if you generate lots of traffic. Example if you have a video game network that only gets 20-30 active people your fine no problem. However if you offer a popular culture network that gives away prizes, allows facebook etc you will need MORE I can't stress enough about the internet and it's billions of bored users MORE is what you need.


In the end people click and click a lot, I have seen people sit at facebook hitting refresh and clicking around just to kill time waiting for replies etc. This will hurt your server, the only way to fight this is to set up a time delay saying "Sorry you have accessed to many pages at one time. Please wait 20 seconds" (Another issue is tabbers people who open 20+. tabs) 

The Forum post is edited by Kenneth Mar 28 '14
Evelyne
Evelyne Mar 30 '14
By "active members" I meant "registered members". Nope, no one was active, at all. The main reason is that I set for approval needed, and no one was ever getting ANY email from the site. So they never bothered to come back and participate... 


And just FYI, it's not just about Oxwall. webhostinghub.com actually did change their metrics. My "CPU usage" keeps having spikes and peaks, even though I have already removed Oxwall and another website. The only way to have the 'cpu usage' low is if you have only one static website, with very few pages and almost no traffic. I know because I'm the 'webmaster' for other friends and I built their websites. Their 'cpu usage' is low. 

ANY kind of dynamic content makes the chart go crazy, it doesn't matter if the websites do anything or if they are just there, collecting dust. They WANT to force you to upgrade and pay more. I've had the very same websites at other hosts, and never had any problem like this before.


Lesson learned: never pay for 3 years. They ALWAYS pull at trick after first year to push you into more expensive plans...