Well, sometimes because of the way Wordpress eats up memory, sometimes because of something else.. the cache!

When you see that your blog is running a bit slow (it happens in shared hosting, and especially with memory eaters) you immediately think about cacheing. If you don’t think on your own, then you might complain to Dreamhost’s Support Service, file a ticket, and they will do the thinking for you.

Now, what they don’t know.. is that, while cacheing is a good concept, apparently the Wordpress cacheing plugins are troublesome. After checking all of my plugins (of course, not checking exactly the right one) reading about it and then some more, I tried disabling my WP Super Cache plugin (it’s an enhanced version of WP Cache, but the later is still problematic. Bingo! No more 500 Internal Server Errors.

PS: Yes, I’ve been thinking of ditching Dreamhost for MediaTemple. But no! Stick with something good enough, willing to help out (Dreamhost’s Support Service always seemed to have a collaboration attitude) and try to improve the situation. Moving around can only mean trial and error.

UPDATE

I have isolated the issue even more. It is not related to WP Super Cache per say, but to its compression feature. GZIP does take a lot of CPU time, and as a user puts it:

Also, I understand that disabling GZIP compression, even though it reduces bandwidth, will increase the CPU time. Disable it. After all, on Dreamhost, bandwidth isn’t the issue - CPU time is.

The problem is that for me, WP Super Cache didn’t disable the GZIPing properly. After disabling the feature, and after disabling the plugin, under wp-content/cache I still had a .htaccess file that was telling the server to feed any requests from there with GZIP. After deleting the .htaccess and activating WP Cache, I’m quite confident to say I’m back on track.

© Andrie, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments
Filed under: Hope, How To, Online, Why, WordPress
Tags: 500 internal server error, cache, dreamhost, feat, fix, mediatemple, php, plugin, webhost, WordPress

One of the bugs is that the administration menus don’t link correctly any longer.

Open orgSeries.php, and replace the function series_organize_options (line 156) with the following:

(...)
Read the rest of Organize Series for Wordpress 2.6 (165 words)

© Andrie, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments
Filed under: How To, Online, Review, WordPress
Tags: fix, plugin, revisions, series

One plugin does just that. It allows you to have the same interface, same Wordpress quality (the interface is the exact same one, hosted at wordpress.com) by registering your blog in their database.

The only downside to it, is that it tries to load the interface in an inner frame, which not only looks bad, but is a bit uneasy for the user.

So I decided for some code changes: instead of loading it with iframe, why not just redirect to it? You can then simply go back to your self-hosted dashboard through the Dashboard link.

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Read the rest of Wordpress.com Stats (42 words)

© Andrie, 2008. | Permalink | No comment
Filed under: Online, Review, WordPress
Tags: plugin, stats

Unfortunately I’m starting with the left foot, since this post will also be part of the Junk category.

One useful plugin with 9 lines of coding allows you to make a page or a post to redirect the visitor to another location.

I installed it for future use - I will soon change the Photos page to be a media gallery and I didn’t want the gallery to be embedded in the blog.

After installation: Buff! Warnings about a file being required but not found. And I start to think: what a simple plugin and still with bugs!

(...)
Read the rest of Redirect (346 words)

© Andrie, 2008. | Permalink | No comment
Filed under: Junk, Online, Review, WordPress
Tags: attitude, criticism, plugin, principles, redirect