Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Best Litespeed Hosts?

[LincolnAdams]

I'm looking for recommendations and advice on any reputable hosting services that use Litespeed/application hosting for my power hungry WordPress build. My current host seems to go down too often for my liking, with unexplainable 503 errors and I've never been able to determine what the culprit was that led to these problems, so I'm assuming it's just the product of being on a weak server with shared users. Thanks!

[MikeDVB]

Is your current provider a LiteSpeed provider (I am guessing so with 503 errors). Also - how is your WordPress build "power hungry" - have you not taken steps to reduce the resource usage?

[NoSupportLinuxHostin]

Are you running any WordPress pluggins? Have you tried disabling the pluggins to see if that improves things?

[LincolnAdams]

Yes I'm currently using a Litespeed host. I should say it's my plugins that seem resource hungry, not my actual WordPress build, although deactivating each one for testing has been unhelpful. I have gone through them all and there has been no deterioration in performance. It only happens sporadically, and never long enough for me to quickly seize the opportunity and discover which wayward plugin might be crippling performance. My host says they have no information available on 503 errors so there's no way for me to troubleshoot the issue.

[Jedito]

Did you tried to work with your host about it?

[WireNine]

How about keeping plugins disabled for a certain amount of time until you experience the error again to find the culprit, and if you stop experiencing the error then you can just leave the plugin disabled.

Are you using Super Cache plugin with WP? That helps bring the resource usage down for WP blogs.

[TonyB]

In 99% of cases 503 errors are PHP crashing. So some code in the PHP is triggering a PHP crash bug. It can also happen if the memory limits in Litespeed are to low for external applications so sometimes PHP is going over the limit. The other reason was bugs in Litespeed itself but I have yet to see any in newer versions.

Your provider should turn on core dumps for for the external application and it will probably dump a core which will tell you why it's throwing a 503 error.

[HostLeet]

Your hosting provider should have no problems knowing why your website is going down all the time. They should be able to give you at least some kind of info..

[LincolnAdams]

Disabling plugins for periods at a time would probably take me over a month to do before I came up with any solid suspects. My host has since moved my site over to a server with better hardware, so I'll watch and see if that improves things. If it happens again I'll make the core dump suggestion and see what they say. You're right there must be a way to troubleshoot 503 errors so I at least have an idea of what plugin(s) is at fault so I can get rid of the ^@$*ing thing. LOL

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by LincolnAdams

Yes I'm currently using a Litespeed host. I should say it's my plugins that seem resource hungry, not my actual WordPress build, although deactivating each one for testing has been unhelpful.

If you list your plugins here we may be able to suggest which one is causing the issue because some are known to cause resource usage issues in general.

Originally Posted by LincolnAdams

I have gone through them all and there has been no deterioration in performance. It only happens sporadically, and never long enough for me to quickly seize the opportunity and discover which wayward plugin might be crippling performance.

It can be very hard to track down resource usage caused by something that is sporadic but realistically if it's not consistent enough to be able to troubleshoot I would question if it was a real issue that your host should address.

Originally Posted by LincolnAdams

My host says they have no information available on 503 errors so there's no way for me to troubleshoot the issue.

I've only seen 503 errors in some buggy LiteSpeed releases but generally LiteSpeedTech has cleared those up quickly and released updated versions. If your provider isn't staying up to date with LiteSpeed releases then it is very possible that they are on one of the buggy releases. I believe they were 4.0.6~4.0.9.

Originally Posted by TonyB

In 99% of cases 503 errors are PHP crashing. So some code in the PHP is triggering a PHP crash bug. It can also happen if the memory limits in Litespeed are to low for external applications so sometimes PHP is going over the limit. The other reason was bugs in Litespeed itself but I have yet to see any in newer versions.

I've only once seen 503's caused by PHP Crashing but you're definitely right that it is a possibility.

Originally Posted by TonyB

Your provider should turn on core dumps for for the external application and it will probably dump a core which will tell you why it's throwing a 503 error.

Absolutely - it's not something you can do but your provider should be able to. If they don't know how to enable the core dumps and then read the contents of said core dumps you may want to find a new provider.