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I'm a teacher and have used multisite WP for two years now as a resource for completing assignments. This spring semester, I have the most students that I've had on my site (30). Prior to this semester I've a max of 26 with no problems. Unfortunately, I've had constant slow downs: either timing out, 500s, or the WP error establishing connection to database.

I use hostmonster as my host and have emailed them. They told me to install a cache plugin and activated it site-wide (WP Super Cache). This didn't really help, though.

Besides server-side issues, I'm wondering about two different possible problems:
1. Connection speed / firewall issue in my school district (which I'm waiting to hear back)
2. The location of this install on the grandchild level of the server: public_html (main domain for the server) -> add-on domain -> sub-directory -> student sites

Could #2 be my problem? The server is based off of my personal site/domain and any other additional. It views add-on domains as sub-directories (domain1.com/domain2), but parks it as it's own domain (domain2.com). Could all the sub-directories be the problem?

Is there anything I could be missing? Does this make sense? Help? Please and thank you.
:)

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    Have you done any troubleshooting at all? Anything you can share with us to narrow the question down a bit?
    – Steve
    Jan 28, 2013 at 19:34
  • Well... just short of moving the site to a lower level, all that I've tried is what I gave above. I hoping there's a quick fix without moving it.
    – hoss9009
    Jan 29, 2013 at 5:03

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Have you got WP super cache set up to serve static pages?

It's mucho weird for you to be getting heavy DHb and code errors if that is the case.

Maybe try setting WP DEBUG LOG to true in WP config? This might give you some error logging information that might help identify source of the errors.

Alternatively, i'm wondering if there's a gremlin in one of your plugins, theme or functions.php. IF there's a way for you to deactivate all plugins and switch to default theme, while still testing for errors, that would be ideal. I understand that's tricky on a live site though.

There is a plugin called "duplicator" that enables you to clone your whole site, configuration, data, plugins, the lot. If you could 1) create a cloned site, 2) find a way to trigger the errors 3) deactivate plugins, switch to default theme 4) test for error 5) progressively reactivate stuff while testing for errors that might well turn up what's going on

Jonathan

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  • I'll enable the LOG and try the duplicator, but I'm not sure how to do that with all 30 sites. Any thoughts? Will it log all 30? I'm using TwentyTwelve on the sub-sites with these plugins (screenshot).
    – hoss9009
    Jan 29, 2013 at 5:10
  • maybe you don't need it on all 30 sites.
    – Jonathan
    Jan 29, 2013 at 18:20
  • The principle is to find a way to replicate the error reliably in a test environment, strip complexity away and hopefully the error goes away, and then progressively add complexity back in until the error reappears. So if you can get the error on just a subsite on its own, that's all you need. If the error is a transient one that you can't reliably trigger - it just happens occasionally out of the blue - that's bad news. You have to rely on some kind of logging in that case.
    – Jonathan
    Jan 29, 2013 at 18:23

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