WordPress Plug-ins can create the 503 service unavailable message.
A great joy of mine is tinkering with my website to make it better. I have found some great plugins that have boosted page views and made the site look more professional. But some plugins have also overwhelmed my site to the point that it couldn’t even be viewed. This is my “Buyer Beware” blog post on plug-ins.
WordPress slows down
At the end of 2012 I notice my WordPress dashboard getting slow. I figured it was because I was approaching 400 total posts. In addition, I changed themes and added more plugins to utilize the sidebars. Again, I figured the new theme, which seemed more extensive, might also be slowing performance.
Is WordPress time sensitive?
The performance issued persisted not only with a slow dashboard but running spell checks and saving drafts. I was constantly getting “no data transferred” or “page unavailable” responses to my actions. The problem was noticeably worse after 4pm PST. Part of this I attributed to WordPress using GMT because statistics for my current day were no longer available as word press considered it tomorrow.
It must be my crappy browser
I also blamed the slowness on my web browser, Google Chrome, as the problems didn’t seem as bad when I logged in through Windows Internet Explorer. As I worked in IE more I realized that I was still having the same problems of no data transfers and having to save or publish multiple times before the WordPress would work properly.
503, your website is dead
It all melted down when I started getting the 503 message: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable. The server may be down for maintenance or it has reached the maximum of concurrent users. Once the 503 happens the website and the dashboard shuts down, locks up, or crashes. Frantic searches on WordPress and other sites only alluded to vague issues with connections and “code speak” that went over my head. A call to my web host confirmed there were no problems with the server, it had to be me.
Time healed the 503 wound
The only thing I was certain of was that after 5 or 10 minutes of having my WordPress dash board open as I worked to add media, files or create a post, I would start getting the 503 message. All I could do was walk away for a couple of hours until the problem resolved itself. In the mean time, my website was dead to the world.
I would love 50 concurrent users
The 503 message said too many connections. My site is too small to have over 50 people requesting information at one time to make it lock up. Several months earlier I had to troubleshoot a problem with a Facebook plugin that when the dashboard was opened, would go through an endless loop of requesting information that couldn’t be provided. This would lock up certain parts of WordPress. I finally located the offending plugin and deleted it.
How fast can I work before web death
My suspicion was that another plugin was somehow causing even larger problems with my site. Something I had added or created was connecting to or from the site in an endless attempt to complete its mission. If the program opened up another connection every 30 seconds, I would be at my maximum 50 user connections in 25 minutes.
Which Plugin was causing problems?
Because there seems to be a plugin update every other day, it was hard to say which of the 20+ plugins might be causing the issue. The only major plugin I had added was one for Storify. I had captured some Storify content to my account on Tuesday and by Wednesday my WordPress dashboard had started to severely deteriorate in response time and error messages. On Thursday, the 503 error was crashing the site.
Relief from offending Plugin
After the second crash on Friday, as soon as I could access the dashboard, I went through and deactivated virtually all plugins. BAM! Performance improved. My WordPress dashboard was back to loading with frightening speed. No more 503, no data transfer or unavailable error messages. Because I deactivated or deleted numerous plugins I am not sure exactly which one, or combination, were causing the errors.
You get what you pay for
From past experience, the plugins that need to communicate with another application like Facebook or Storify which use the application programming interface (API) have caused me the most problems. From now on I will add one plugin at a time and watch for performance degradation. While I was hopping mad at the time of the 503 crashes, I can’t blame the crappy WordPress plugins too much…you get what you pay for.