What does it mean when a site can only have 20 processess? Does it mean only 20 people can visit the site at one time?
No..Processs as nothing to do with vistiors..Process means suppose if you are running a installation that's a process then other scripts etc all shows process bassically there should be no restriction on process unless you are on shared/reseller/dedi.. Saad
20 processes for a tiny site up to a few hundred visitors per day may be just ok for an average site with a few thousand visitors / day definitely far too little a site 5k-10k or more visitors per day definitely will upgrade to a root server without any such limits at all because then you most likely have around 100 or even more processes running at any time
Don't use anything that has persistant connections to the database. Don't install perl scripts if you can get away with it. Don't install anything that runs in the background, for instance torrent-trackers, irc bots, anything to do with irc infact. You should be able to happily run a php / mysql site with that amount of resources quite happily if you follow the advice people have given you here.