Okay, I feel the need to rant about my experience with Dreamhost. To be honest, the hosting was okay for the first three months. I had a shared hosting plan that was reliable, but not particularly fast compared to other websites that I visit. After my traffic picked up to a measily 20k monthly page views, the bolts started falling off the wheel. I first started getting a litany of 404 error pages from my admin panel along with some server error pages. At the time, I had no clue what was happening. I contacted Dreamhost and they did manage to find the root cause of the problem: them. They told me that they were killing my user agent for excessive server load. In terms of advice, they told me that I remove plugins and sent me to a useless Dreamhost wiki page that was outdated. Now, my only server intensive plugins are probably a related posts plugin and a popular post plugin. You're telling me that a shared hosting account can't handle these plugins on a 20k monthly page view website? They recommended that I switch from W3 Total Cache to Supercache. Despite my opinion that W3 Cache was superior, I tried making this change. Needless to say, this change only escalated my problems. One confusing factor is that my friend has a site that I designed which has 5x as much traffic as mine and uses the same Wordpress plugins plus a bunch more. He's never had a server overload issue with Blue host. None of these remedies including removing plugins resolved the problem. Looking for a quick fix, i upgraded to their VPS hosting service. It did solve the problem for now, but their VPS hosting runs slower than my shared hosting did before I had problems. Anyway, even with VPS hosting, the only info I can get from them to fix this problem even when I submit a support ticket is a lame response with some crappy links to their Dreamhost wiki pages. Most of these pages are outdated. All of them either contain information that I already know or are way beyond my abilities like making changes to the server configuration with scripts. I'm new to hosting issues (only had a self hosted blog since March of this year), but if I can figure out how to move my site to a new hosting provider, I'll probably switch to Blue host.
I know, Dreamhost isn't my favorite. I've also had some problems with them, and then I moved to KnownHost. A good and quality hosting company.
^ 20K pages per month are nothing, I have a website that gets 200,000+ pages per month but I never have any problem with my host. They only told me once to install some plugins to cache the site to avoid excessive usage of server resources, when I did that they told me everything is fine now. By the way my host is Namecheap.com. You should really change your host as soon as possible. Dreamhost is a proven "failed" host.
For Wordpress hosting I recommend http://topnotchhosting.com/ They have a wealth of experience with Wordpress, no other host can match.
Hey, thanks for your feedback. How hard is it to switch hosts for a Wordpress Blog? I've never switched before and I'm not sure how difficult/time consuming it is to change hosting providers. Never mind the fact that I paid for 2 years of hosting in advance with Dreamhost.
It is very easy. You can follow this easy tutorial http://www.sitereviver.com/tutorial-how-to-move-wordpress-site-to-a-new-server-or-host/
Technically you will not do anything. You only let your new host access to your cpanel and they will do the transfer job.
Just to point something out, it has NOTHING to do with the 20K visitor numbers...at least not directly. You are saying the problems were excessive resource usage and this is caused by scripts or processes you are running on your site. To say the issue was "them" is not the case, the issue is "you" and the scripts you were using. Most shared hosting plans will deal with 20K visitors quite happily, and I'm sure most Dreamhost shared accounts will too, but when the scripts being used are not efficient and/or use excessive resources then the fault isn't with the host but with the developer of the script and the person using it. If your only plan is to move hosts, then expect the same thing to happen again. I remember one application that was installed by a customer that had a caching system built in to make it more "efficient". Thing is, it didn't work properly and re-created the cache on each page request. The cache-rebuild caused the CPU to spike to 100% for about 20 seconds (on a 16-core server where there were only a few other sites). In this case, 1 visitor caused issues, never mind 20K. The problem was identified by the developer and fixed and now there isn't an issue, but at the time we had a friendly word with the client telling them their site was using excessive resources and that they needed to sort their software and scripts out. So the issue with Dreamhost isn't the 20K visitors and their inability to deal with that volume of traffic, the problem was a script you were using that was using excessive resources which started to show its unreliability at around 20K visitors per month. I'm not affiliated with Dreamhost in any way, but when people don't really understand the issue and blame a host for the failings of a script they are using, and blame them for the wrong thing - saying their hosting couldn't cope with 20K visitors when the problem was the script being used couldn't cope with that many visitors without using excessive resources (a completely different thing) - then something needs to be said.
It happens time to time with big web hosting companies when they start getting bad reviews. They just can't satisfy everyone. I think that is ok. But at the same time they have hundreds of other customers which are happy with them
I agree with you, but they should try fixing some of those problems in order to keep their customers. It will be a good strategy because, if you fix their problems and everything will be ok, be sure that they will recommend you to others!
Ron, I will admit that I am pretty frustrated with my experience with Dreamhost which probably just qualifies me as an irate 'biased' customer. I'm certainly not a technical expert with these issues either. I've contacted them numerous times and tried to find out what the problem is. Here's what I can tell you. 1. I haven't changed a thing on my site with the exception of upgrading to Wordpress 3.0 and any plugins that have been upgraded in 2 months. 2. I use the exact same setup on a Bluehost site that actually has a few more plugins too like the Wibya toolbar and a Facebook fan page, that's not having a single issue. 3. Dreamhost support is quick and friendly, but I've spent a week trying to find out why things are so bad. Even with the VPS upgrade I've had page load times of 30 -66 seconds. 4. Getting a happy reply and a link to a wiki page is getting really annoying when I follow the wiki and don't notice an improvement. 5. I've manually gone through every plugin that I used, pruned a bunch, and none really jumped out as a big offender though some obviously affect load time marginally. 6. I'm still experiencing problems. I realize that even with my VPS plan, I'm not a priority customer. I get the sense that their support really just wants to send me off to move onto the next person. Here read this wiki page and get lost.
Oh, on another forum that I use, other people have validated similar experiences with server overload problems on Dreamhost shared hosting that did not resolve with a move to their VPS. Also, I'm not an expert, but I've checked their server response times which have varied quiet a bit. At times, it's over .07 seconds/kb which I'm assuming might indicate that they're having server issues? Most sites that I maintain are consistently .01 seconds/kb on shared hostgator/bluehost.
Bottom line, I've wasted hours following their recommendations and nothing has resolved. 1. I prevented hotlinking of images through adding an .htaccess file to my upload folder. 2. I've changed to SuperCache from W3 total Cache as they advised, which now has my sites loading slower. 3. I've changed from the FastCGI setting they recommended. 4. I've pruned plugins 5. I've manually tested every plugin with pingdom 6. I've read an implemented every dreamhost wiki that they've sent to me. Here's a screen capture of my latest page load time:
Really, what were you expecting when buying web hosting from such a big overseller? Their servers are surely packed up to the max, just to gain an extra buck, disregarding the fact that this leads to slow page loading for their clients. I for one never liked overselling, I usually want to know what exactly I get for the money I pay.
OK, maybe I was a bit quick off the mark and I apologise. You seem to have done all you can to look for a solution and haven't found a satisfactory one. There's a couple of things in your posts that might be worth replying to since you've been a "victim" of them. 1. Moving to a VPS will give you better performance than shared hosting Maybe. Maybe Not. In general, probably not - unless you go for a high-end VPS. The servers used by most hosting companies for shared hosting can be powerful pieces of kit - much more powerful than the average "high-end" dedicated server you see for sale. Unless the server is overcrowded then it is capable of huge performance and no VPS is going to match it. With a VPS you have all the resources you've been allocated to use as you like but when you compare that to a shared hosting server with 16 logical cores, 64GB Ram, and RAID60 with hardware raid controllers, the VPS is going to be a wimp in comparison. If it's performance you're after a VPS is not always the best solution. VPSs can be excellent performers, particularly when you go for a high-end one, but don't expect it to automatically have better performance than a shared hosting set-up. The positive arguement for VPSs when you're looking for hosting is privacy, control, then performance. Pretty much in that order. 2. Solving the problem is the hosts responsibility. I know this may not be a popular view, but I don't think it IS the hosts responsibility to fix it when users have problems with their scripts. From my perspective, the primary responsibilty of the hosting company is to provide a stable, reliable and high-performance environment for their customers, and to make it as easy as possible for their customers to get the best out of the services they offer. When someone loads a script that uses excessive resources then it is the hosts responsibility to protect the needs of the many against the abuses of the few. When many peoples sites are being affected by rogue scripts the host has to take action. What that action should be is open to individual interpretation, but in most cases it involves shutting down the site, or restricting it's use. Better courses of action might include moving the site temporarily to a different server while the issue is resolved, but irrespective of the action taken one thing the host can't do is ignore the problem. Does that mean I don't think customer service is important? Of course not. Our support team are instructed to help people out and account restriction is the last resort action when the user doesn't do anything to help, but it doesn't change my view that rogue scripts, badly performing sites, and systems that use excessive resources are the primary responsibility of the user who decides to use them, and nothing to do with the host. The host has to make sure systems work for their customers, and if someone is affecting the ability to do that the host has to take action. With regard to your current issue, unless your VPS is so low-end it is next to useless, then something is wrong - Duh! I'm sure you know that. I'd be inclined to look closely at your VPSs set-up first. Scripts will cause problems, but if other people are running the same set-up as you without serious issues, then check out your set-up. There is a vast difference in the way companies set-up their systems. Maybe Dreamhost are missing something out or are misconfiguring something that is having this affect. If you're not a server admin, find someone who can give your VPS a quick once-over to check it's set-up correctly.
Most web hosting companies provides free transfer service to new users. If you are using of Cpanel it will be more easy . But don't worry, They do it for you for free.
Determining the root cause of usage is a difficult thing to do. Especially with wordpress and unless someone is going to sit there tracing the PHP processes you're not going to find much of an answer without a heck of a lot of trial and error. The whole caching system is a wash they are very close to the same. Assuming both were setup properly which is typically never the case with users. They set them up but forget to add the htaccess rules. If they add the htaccess rules the idea is the pages should be served as static files (.html files) rather than hitting PHP at all. If it's hitting PHP a lot then the caching is not doing it's job. There are plugins with wordpress that do not scale as posts and content go up. I'll give one example which in this case I doubt is the cause but it's our most frequent offender. The plugin yet another related post plugin as user posts goes up the queries it performs to the mysql server become slower. I've seen this plugin take 500+ seconds to execute it's queries on brand new servers. So the first thing you need to look at is the plugins. So what happens if every plugin is disabled? Does the site start loading fast suddenly? If that is the case now we've found our culprit. A plugin possibly does not scale very well and is now showing it's ugly head. Now a matter of trial and error to see when the plugins start to slow down. You find the one you've found your answer it is in fact the plugin. Maybe it works fine on another site but on this specific site due to the content or what it's doing it does not for whatever reason. If even with all plugins disabled it is still slow you need to check if maybe it's the theme. Some themes are notorious for loading up with all kinds of random stuff. So switch to the default wordpress theme and confirm nothing is broken and see if it's any faster. If it's faster then the theme is doing something it should not and it's causing the issues. Finally one other cause of slow page loads is fragmentation of the MySQL tables. This is typically not a problem but if you had say 100,000 posts in your wordpress blog it could be. If performing simple queries are causing slow downs. So just something as simple as doing a search for all posts on a specific category. You may be able to fix it somewhat if you run mysql optimize on the tables. If you've done all of this then it probably is the web host. The far majority of the time though it's not it's just the web host is blamed. The user then moves to a new web host and maybe it works better. In most cases it does not if the server loads were low on both ends. It takes then that the user figures it out or they just blame the next web host and continue the cycle. I speak from experience we're constantly battling with poorly made scripts. We send out warnings daily and customers do get booted on occasion as well. In most cases it's just the fact they do not wish to fix their scripts. So they jump host to host not tackling the true problem. We host some users who easily push 100,000 pageviews a day while others getting booted struggle to serve a few thousand a day. Optimization is just not at all something users think of at all. The problem starts at the developers and trickles down to the end users.
I had a terrible experience with Dreamhost. They even scratched my personal blog with 2 years of archives. I moved to Hostgator -mainly- and that's OK now.