Ajax.php and vBulletin

Hi there,

We almost blew out our server today, currently on shared hosting, and they said the culprit file was "ajax.php".

Any insight about what that might mean as far as us troubleshooting so we needn't try to move to virtual hosting just now?

I suspect the culprit was the Live Topic hack
Live Topic - vBulletin.org Forum

as we have handled the same and more amount of visitors in the past.

The event that was happening was a live concert, people were receiving texts and twitters and what not and so the thread was moving extremely fast, if that helps in any way.

 

How many people did you have online at once?

Yes that modification would add some over head, but how much I'm not sure.

Generally if you have more than 20 people online at once with shared hosting you're going to have a lot of problems. If you're constantly finding yourself hitting the limits of your shared server you may have to move or upgrade to a VPS (recommended solution)

 

We have had as many as 600 on at one time without problem.

We will be looking into upgrading our server, if we can raise enough money to do so.

:o

I don't know anything about VPS vs. dedicated, but I know I will probably find it here on this site.

 

Try playing with the setting for Live Topic.

Try lowing:
Thread Idle Time
User Idle Time

And raising:
Request Interval

I think it was said that Maximum visible Posts wasn't working correctly? I can't remember, but I've got mine set high (I think that was the recommendation so this wouldn't cause problems) at 1000.

 

Thanks! We are kind of worrying about what to do. We may be able to move our site onto the record label, but I don't want to lose control, I'd rather pay for our own hosting. :o

 

I hated that hack because of such nonsense. Also under disable ajax features, set it to:
Disable Problematic AJAX Features or Disable All AJAX Features.

 

I'm using this live mod as well.
The only ajax addon i'm having problem with the server load is the Tabbed Forum Home - vb.org

 

Ah, really??? Dang. I just installed that tabbed forum home. I LOVE it.

:o

I hope it is not problematic.

I looked at the non-Ajax one but it was kinda daunting to install

 

Yah. Same as you.
I"m on shared host as well. The ajax.php file is very active ever since i installed the tabbed forum mod.
I thought of changing it to the non-ajax version but like you said, daunting to install. >_>

 

How do you tell which file is active? Like is there a report from cPanel or something like that?

 

I'm not sure whether you can get the log from cpanel.
I checked from the host cpanel.