Further updates on my blog..

Hello Paul,

Thank you for writing.

We have forward your request to the concern department to activate your domain.

We will let you know as soon as possible.

Best Regards

SUPPORT

So no joy there then! What’s amazing here is that I received an an automatically generated email at 1:02PM acknowledging receipt of the email I sent them yesterday.

A little simple math shows that it took the staff at One.com 5 hours and 16 minutes to inform me that the email would be forwarded elsewhere.

It’s 11:34 in the morning as I write this post. Their concern department has had that email for over 17 hours now. All I want is my HTTP access enabled. How hard is that?

Anyway, enough ranting.

I want to thank everyone who has been so supportive so far, offering me advice, spreading the word and even offering to host my site.

In no particular order thanks go out to:

Kevin Dixie of FuelMyBlog

Rex Dixon of Lending Club and Technically Speaking

JohnC of Homelessinjax.com

Steven Hodson of Winextra

Scot Duke of Innovative Business Golf Solutions.

So why have One.com suspended my account.

Apparently at 12:05 today my blog generated a heavy load on their servers.

the php code used generate a heavy load on our servers

Now, lets get something straight, I only run WordPress of OFlaherty.dk. I’ve got one installation for my blog, and one for Blog Resource. The root of the domain contains just a few pages of bog standard HTML.

Now, according to one.com the problem was being caused by my blog (blog.oflaherty.dk) but they couldn’t tell me what, or why, or how, or even hint at what “script” might be causing the problem.

I’ve had the OFlaherty.dk domain since June of 2004 and I have always had multiple WordPress installations in multiple sub domains. At one point I had 4 WordPress installations running concurrently without problems. About 6 months ago I reduced that to just two installations.

Now, I can understand One.com wanting to prevent other users on their server from being affected by my site using excessive resources, but what bugs me is that I haven’t changed the code of my site in a couple of weeks.

According to them the problem started at 12:05 today. All that happened at 12:05 was that I posted a blog post and then went in and moderated my comment spam. There was 101 pieces of spam in the moderation queue and 201 in Akismet waiting to be checked for false positives.

I deleted the 101 in the queue and then checked Akismet for false positives. Once that was done I hit the “delete all” button and my site stopped responding. I refreshed the page, it loaded but none of the spam was gone. I hit the delete button again, got a blank white page.

I tried to go into /wp-admin/ and got a white page with the suspended notice.

It’s a little too coincidental that the server load coincided with the only activity I performed on the site today, so I can only surmise that the deletion of a large number of spam comments from the database was too much for the server to handle at once.

But it was only 201 comments. That seems a very low number to me as just 2 days ago I deleted in excess of 4000 spam comments in one go.

Still my reasoning that it was something to do with Akismet (not necessarily directly but interacting with the server to delete a large number of comments) was supported after opening up my PHPMyAdmin panel.

I have 1301 comments on my blog. When I opened phpmyadmin I could see that the comments table was taking up 9.9 MB. I optimized the database (which I do regularly) and it quickly returned to a more believable 821 KB.

What’s bugging me here is One.com’s dealing with the issue. I received an email almost the same instant that the “site suspended” page appeared. It was an automatic response so told me nothing useful except that I should contact One.com.

I logged into my control panel and accessed their “live support” which is just java chat between you and an operator.

The first operator was NOT helpful. He essentially just told me that it was my fault and I’ve got to fix it. He wouldn’t / couldn’t give me any information about what “script” was causing the server load.

According to him I should just fix it, with nothing but FTP access to my site and direct my questions to the WordPress support forums (I have been checking the existing questions in the forums, but to no avail. I’ve also posted a question here.)

The second operator I spoke with at least informed me when the server load occurred which allowed me to match up my activities to the time.

So I disabled Akismet via FTP, and asked for HTTP access to my domain to be enabled. Apparently they won’t do that!

The operator told me that I had to email One.com support, explain the whole lot and await a reply form them. Unfortunately , my experience is that support emails can take up to 24 hours to be replied to.

Why can’t the operators just enable http access? I was told it was for security reasons! That can’t be right. They’ll enable FTP access for me but not HTTP access?

I’d hate to be a novice user in this situation. I’d hate to be unable or afraid to FTP in and delete files from my server.

What I really hate is the “This site has been suspended” notice. It makes things sound as if I’ve done something wrong, such as not pay my bill or violating the terms of service.

Don’t get me wrong here, I understand that One.com has to protect other sites hosted on that server, but I do think that considering I pay for 5 web hotels on their service they could be a little more helpful.

Anyway, below is a copy of the 3 conversations I have had with One.com support operators as well as an email I sent to them afterwards. I didn’t get nasty with them because I want to get the issue resolved.

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Enzo’

Enzo: Thank you for using One.com Interactive Online Support. My name is Enzo. How may I assist you?

you: Hi.. I’m getting a “This site has been suspended” on OFlaherty.dk Why?

Enzo: yes

Enzo: i’ll check this out

Enzo: you’re the manager of this website ?

you: Yep. It’s mine

Enzo: the php code used generate a heavy load on our servers

Enzo: you have to fix it

Enzo: can you ?

you: The php code hasn’t changed.. It’s just standard wordPRess

Enzo: one minute

Enzo: we cannot determine which script causes the load, you need to identify and determine that at your end…

Enzo: WordPress’s working fine on our servers

you: All I have running is 2 versions of WordPress and a couple of html pages..

you: About 6 months ago I used to have 4 versions of wordpress and there was no problem

Enzo: we will active your FTP account so you can fix the issue

Enzo: Will you ?

you: I will try…

you: But if you guys could give me some sort of clue as to what I’m looking for?

Enzo: one minute

Enzo: it’s in your side

Enzo: try the WordPress Forum, a plenty of help

Enzo: The FTP is ACtif now

Enzo: you can enter it

Enzo: but

Enzo: .

Enzo: the Http access is still blocked, until this issue is fixed

you: Can you tell if it’s resource.oflaherty.dk or blog.oflaherty.dk is causing the problem

Enzo: needs to contact someone who knows programming to help you fix it

Enzo: the blog

Enzo: get back to us once its done

Enzo: we will Unsuspend your http access

Enzo: Is there anything else I could assist you with?

you: Not right now..

Enzo: Please feel free to contact us again for any further assistance. Good Bye and have a nice time : -)

12:35

Kaye: Thank you for using One.com 24/7 Interactive Online Support. My name is Kaye. How may I assist you?

you: Hi Kaye.. I was just talking with another operator because OFlaherty.dk was suspended due to excessive server load. Could you tell me when this excessive server load began?

Kaye: just today 7/10/07 12:05 PM

you: Thank you…

Kaye: You are welcome

Kaye: Is there anything else I could assist you with?

you: Not right now..

Kaye: Alright

Kaye: Have a nice time

12:45

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Enzo’

Enzo: hi

you: Hi.. I believe I’ve located the problem with OFlaherty.dk and have disabled the script in question

Enzo: so it’s ok

Enzo: a script you added

you: I believe so, the problem started at 12:05 pm which is when I was moderating spam

Enzo: ok, one minute

Enzo: Please send a mail to: support@dk.one.com Team, an explain them the issue

Enzo: they will be able to finelize this operation

Enzo: and maybe addvise more

Enzo: .

Enzo: Is there anything else I could assist you with?

you: So you can’t reenable my account?

Enzo: your http access will return aftrer

Enzo: for us now, the FTP

Enzo: after consulting support@dk.one.com all will be ok

Enzo: it’s for security reasons also

Enzo: Is there anything else I could assist you with?

you: no thanks

Enzo: Please feel free to contact us again for any further assistance. Good Bye and have a nice time : -)

Hi,

My site www.oflaherty.dk was suspended today after it apparently started using to many CPU resources.

I contacted your support who told me that the “php code used generate a heavy load on our servers”.

Other than that he was not particularly helpful telling me that One.com is unable to tell which script was causing an increase in load and expecting me to fix the problem with no clue as to what as going on except that it was on “my side”. His only suggestion was to contact WordPress support (I run wordpress on OFlaherty.dk).

Contacting them is kind of pointless if all you can say is “My site is generating excessive server load but I don’t know why”.

Anyway, I spoke to another operator, Kaye, and she was quite helpful in telling me that the excessive load started at 12:05pm.

12:05 pm coincided with me moderating spam on the site and I believe the load may have been caused by Akismet (Spam moderation plugin used in WordPress) as it communicated with the Akismet servers. The spam moderation was the only action performed by me on the site today besides create a blog post earlier.

I have disabled the plugin and request that you re-enable http access to my account.

Paul

Again, I’d hate to be a novice in these situations. I know a lot of people who had friends set up their blogs on their web hosts and have no idea what to do if there is a problem

Now I just have to wait to see what One.com replies back.

Any comments would be helpful, especially if anybody has experience of problems related to the wp_comments table and Akismet.

Hopefully my next post will be from my usual location….