Omg Godaddy.

[njdubois]

For the past 11 days, my clients shared host with godaddy has been next to impossible to access. It will sit there trying to connect for a minute and then say the page isn't available. Directly from godaddy: "shared servers may experience times of high load!" 11 days of barely being able to use the site is WAY more than times of high load.

 

To make things worse, godaddy is telling us there is nothing wrong on their end.

 

Accessing the database directly isn't a problem, it works nice and snappy. We did add one page, that no one is using but the 2 of us, and it is very light. Also, this page was added maybe a week before the issues started.

 

Right now, if i browse along the base "this is our company" page, where there is no database work, things seem to move around alright. But is that because these pages have no php code, and are rather small and simple, or is it because my code is bad? Right now the page isn't doing to bad, there is still a bit of a delay on php sites.

 

Is there anyway possible that my code would work ok for 2 years, and then like a flip of a switch, we can't access anything? What else could cause this? Maybe its a memory issue on the server? Wouldn't godaddy be able to tell us that?

 

Is there a way to check my current available server resources? how much memory is free for example? Is there a way to test my code? As I said, it worked ok for ever, and then just died.

 

We are both so confused right now. Why is godaddy saying there is nothing wrong, when obviously there is? Are they jerking us around? They are recommending upgrading to a VPS or ded server. We do not believe we have the traffic for that. Would opening my site up to beta testing help?

 

What should my first step be in troubleshooting this? I've thought about copying everything over to my personal microsoft shared host with godaddy and seeing if my code does the same thing. But something tells me that wont be an issue.

 

Please help!!!! SOS!!

 

thanks

Nick DuBois

[njdubois]

I've pinged marcomtechnologies.com from my windows command prompt and its working pretty fast. Normally, going through the basic company page, that is jsut a "this is who we are" with no php is pretty snappy, but click the link to bring you to the login screen and thats when things slow down.

 

Is it possible that its my code? As I said, it worked fine forever and now I'm really worried.

[Christian F.]

Everything's possible, but what you really need to do is to get some hard facts about this problem. This means checking logs, running performance tests, profiling your code, and checking the stats of the system (top, iotop, etc). The more information you have about the problem, the easier it'll be to find the root cause.

Once you've found the root cause, you can start to think about how to solve the problem. But until then you don't really know what the problem is, just the symptoms of it.

 

Considering the symptoms you've described, it sounds like it might be the DB server, memory load (thus high IO load), or the PHP code itself. Those are the three likeliest candidates, at least from what little I know thus far.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Christian F.

[kicken]

If you want to post the code for your login screen someone may be able to check if for you and see if there is anything you're doing that is slow.

 

[njdubois]

Thanks for the excellent replies!

 

First I'll catch you up. I copied everything over to a Microsoft Shared Host I have for my band with Godaddy earlier. It still links to the marcomtechnologies.com mysql database, so I was able to just copy it all over and go. I logged in, did some list generating and various other things, and of course it flew. Probably faster than it ever was on the Linux Shared Host my client has. So it being the actual code seems even more unlikely to me now.

 

Christian, you said some things that have caught my interest. What do you mean by "Profiling your code?" If it means what I believe, to have your code looked at has been an interest to me for a while. My problem is that I am self taught. Been programming with basic and its versions for 15 or so years, with bits of other languages in between. Only school classes where the ones in high school. I don't have any peers that I know and trust that I can have come over and say, no you should have done this that way. Or that's not a good way to do that. Now this site has grown into a huge service. Pages and pages of php and html. I don't feel safe just showing random people on the internet. Any code I post I have to be careful with what needs to be censored.

 

Is there a service that you can sign up for, with some kind of legal agreement protecting us?

 

Could you elaborate on top, iotop, etc?

 

​Currently, GoDaddy is transferring our site to another Server. Tomorrow we will setup FTP permissions and I will copy the site over. I really think everything is going to be just fine but the problems we have experienced show a whole in my knowledge of the server. I'm sure that it is in my best interest as a web developer to understand how to troubleshoot, test for and diagnose issues.

 

I also want to say this, I wish I had taken time to learn php years ago. My life would be a world different.

 

Thanks for the help, I look forward to the replies. This is taking me down a path I have yet to travel!

 

Nick

[Christian F.]

Profiling the code/application is the act of running it through an detailed usage statistics analyser, to produce and accurate report over the system resource usage (time, memory, CPU, Input-Output loads (IO), etc) of the application. This is done to identify actual problem areas, and to determine where to focus your efforts in improvements to gain the most benefit.

Quite similar to benchmarking, you could say. With the difference being that benchmarking gives the final (total) result, while profiling gives you the details of every step taken. So while benchmarking can only tell you if your app is slow or not, profiling can tell you exactly why and where.

 

As for having someone else go over your code, doing a code-review and perhaps optimising it, that's quite possible. Most of the badged members and other highly active members here would be able to do that, and I suspect that quite a few of us has done so at least a couple of times in the past.

Contracts and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) are, naturally enough, expected to be required for such a project. Both for the client's sake, and for the consultant. I'm not aware over any centralized service for this though.

I applaud the carefulness and concern you're displaying, btw, a healthy dose of scepticism.

 

The commands I mentioned (top, iotop, etc) are all *nix commands, which'll help you monitor the system resource usage on the server. You'll have to have SSH access to the server in order to run them though, and iotop requires root access. Using them will tell you a lot about the overall state of the server, and hopefully let you identify the problematic areas. Such as if there's a shortage of RAM, if something is constantly using 100% of the CPU, high IO loads and stuff like that.

I recommend learning about basic *nix administration, so that you'll be familiar with these tools and know how to use them. They're invaluable in helping you determine the root causes of problems involving the server, and to monitor the general health of the system.

[Ken_GoDaddy]

@njdubois

 

I'm from Go Daddy and came across your post.

 

I have checked your site and the site does appear to come up quickly internally and externally.

 

Are you still running into slowness problems? If so I am more than happy to assist further. Please fee free to reply or send me a direct message.