Large Multi-Site Online newspaper – right track?

  • Resolved zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)


    12 years, 3 months ago

    We are using WordPress Multi-site to operate a string of newspapers over multiple cities. We are using sub-folders setup.

    Each City is it’s own online newspaper. We use categories and WP-Multi-post plugin to organize the content on each site.

    The benefit of multi-site is that we have one log-in dashboard for writers and editors to enter their stories. Then they use the Wp Multi-post plugin to send the story to the applicable city or cities (local news to one city, provincial news to multiple cities, national news to all cities). They also assign the post a category. Then on the individual sites we use categories to control how it is displayed.

    We post 7-12 articles a day across the network of sites. Currently have well over 2000 articles on most of the cities (14 cities and growing). Database size is around 320 MB.

    Running on a VPS linux server with WHM and Cpanel.

    Currently seem to be having some issues with the server crashing. My host provider has been excellent in response time and making adjustments, but lately we have been tracking the problems to actual things we are doing on the site (ran Wp-optimize, was uploading large file and then canceled mid-upload, tried to backup complete Database using Wp-Backup plugin, etc).

    We are getting some kind of problem about once every day or two.

    Any advice???

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 26 total)
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  • Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    I know you will probably say shut off plugins and see what happens. Well if we shut off plugins, the site loses functionality and we can’t have that happen as we turn one on at a time over 2-3 weeks waiting for server to crash.

    These are the plugins we currently have:
    Advanced Export for WordPress & WordPress MU
    Askimet
    Contact Form 7
    GAM Shortcode
    Get the Image
    Google Analyticator
    Google News XML Sitemap
    Hotfix
    Multipost MU
    Page Tagger
    WordPress Database Backup
    WordPress SEO by Yoast
    WP-Cleanup
    WP-Optimize

    brasofilo

    (@brasofilo)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    take a look at these threads:
    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/reasonable-of-db-tables-for-our-size-of-multisite?replies=11
    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/multisite-db-optimizer?replies=9#post-2525285

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Thanks Brasofilo 🙂 Some good info indeed and will help as I go forward.

    Any suggestions on how I am using multi-site or whether there is a better option?

    Thanks

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Depends on what’s crashing. Is it the server or the database? What’s causing the crash?

    I would consider turning on server side caching for PHP, as well as some caching plugins (like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache).

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Running on a VPS linux server with WHM and Cpanel.

    Not enough relevant info. How much RAM? Can you tweak default Apache settings for threading How much memory is allocated to MySQL?

    Lotsa stuff you can do here.

    Also: learn ssh, have someone sit and watch the server using top. Usually you can figure out generally what actions are going on as you watch the server go down.

    /voice of experience

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Thanks for chiming in Andrea, I was hoping you would respond.
    My server guy has been analyzing each time something happened and fixing or tweaking things (Caching, other settings, etc).

    What I would like your opinion on is using WordPress Multi-site for this type of deployment – am I on the right track. Or am I going to have problems as I grow.

    We really like the fact that we can log in to the core site and multi-post to all or whichever paper an article needs to show up on. But what it does is create many copies of articles as about 70% of the content can be posted on more than one site. About 30% is posted to all sites.

    In the core ‘blog’ on the main site we have about 7400 posts, and on the other 14 sites we run between 2-3000 posts each.
    Thanks

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Take a look at the site if you wish – http://beaconnews.ca

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    You still haven;t said how mch RAM you have available. It;s kind of important.

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    1.5 GB Ram running on the Xen platform.
    We have enabled query caching for mysql (24MB total cache,1MB cache per query max). have also enabled thread caching for mysql. Using NOOP as the i/o scheduler.

    Hope that helps.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Do you know yet if it’s the DB or the CPU that’s blowing up?

    If it’s CPU, have you done any SERVER caching? APC for example? Zend eaccelerator?

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    So you have tons of ram. Good.

    We really like the fact that we can log in to the core site and multi-post to all or whichever paper an article needs to show up on.

    Now the next time someone does this, have your server guy sit and watch. Do things blow up? then it;s your multi post plugin.

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Ipstenu – it is the server (CPU) that crashes.

    Andrea – crashes are usually happening when I am either backing up the database or optimizing (using WP-optimize) the database.

    But again, would like your input on the long term viability of this type of site – where we post to the core blog all the articles, and then spread the content out over other sites. Looking to expand to 25 sites this week (from 14). Currently over 7000 posts in core blog and 2-3000 in each of the other existing sites.

    How big can I get??

    we will be increasing by 60-100 posts per week.
    So in a year will be over 12,000 posts in core blog and 3-4000 in each of the other sites.

    thanks

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 3 months ago

    crashes are usually happening when I am either backing up the database or optimizing (using WP-optimize) the database.

    For starters, stop using a plugin to optimize your DB 🙂 Do it the ‘right’ way, via mysql commandline or phpMyAdmin instead, and see if that helps.

    Also how are you doing backups? If it’s a plugin, you may need to consider using server tools instead of plugins, which, yeah, I can totally see them doing this.

    I’d think size-wise you’re okay. I mean, WordPress.com runs Multisite.

    Thread Starter zedbiz

    (@zedbiz)

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Thanks Ipstenu – will do that.
    What about cleaning out post revisions and old Spam that WP-optimize also does – how do you suggest I do that?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 3 months ago

    Akismet itself auto-turfs spam after a month if you turn that on.

    As for post revisions, you could start with limited them in your wp-config.

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Post_Revisions

    I keep mine to 3 or 5 on most sites.

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