Website RAM usage

[Ironside]

Sorry for the trivial question, but how do you work out how much RAM your server/website is using each month?

[sozzled]

I don't know the answer to this question (it's not a "Joomla issue" in any event). PHP memory usage fluctuates over the course of time. As long as you have sufficient to operate your web business at any one moment (and you don't exceed that amount) then you're OK.

Even if you were able to monitor the "month's usage" of PHP memory, I don't know what that would tell you (unless there were times during the month you ran close to, or exceeded, that amount). It might be something you could ask your webhosting provider to help you with.

PHP memory is transient. Let's say, for example, that you have 512M of PHP memory and, let's say, over the course of a month, you used 5 Gbytes of PHP (added up) but, at no time did you exceed or run close to 512M. What does that tell you? What you probably need to know is the mean PHP memory used and the standard deviation from the mean over that time.

[Ironside]

At the moment, I am with a cloud server and am using the following:

2 CPU cores
4 GB RAM
50 SSD

monthly fee around £70

However, if I go with another well-known hosting company and go with the cheaper hosting VPS I will get the following:


2 CPU cores
2 GB RAM
120 GB disk space
1.5 TB bandwidth

Monthly fee starting from $19.99

[gws]

Rather depends on how many websites you are going to host. If it is just the one then second option should be fine.However you are UK based and a server charged in dollars is probably US based not a problem unless you have thousands of visitors per day.

[Ironside]

My main website gets between 2000-2500 visits a day according to Google analytics. I have another website that gets up to around 500 visits a day. I'd like to think that the 2 GB of RAM would be enough. There is no problem of disk space, I think I am using around 9 gigs of disk space. As for bandwidth, it doesn't really go above 30 GB each month now.

[Ironside]

Talk about nontransparent. They are offering a VPS hosting package and it says it starts at $29.95 a month. I just found out that you only pay that price if you pay three years upfront. Otherwise, you pay $129.95 a month.

[sozzled]

Anyway, returning to the substance of your original question, it's not that simple to monitor all the metrics involved in website management. As I tried to indicate earlier, perhaps the most important metric (as far as PHP memory is concerned) is peak memory utilisation over a period of time. As long as you're not running close to (or exceeding) the maximum PHP memory utilisation then you should feel fairly reassured that you're doing all right.

Furthermore, we are always on the lookout for better deals, better value for money, from alternative ways to host our websites. Ultimately, however, it's a business decision based on a combination of how well we and our clients perceive our sites to be performing rather than relying on raw data.

Having said these things, there's always the catch-all problem: the application of Parkinson's Law. In other words, what might be sufficient today may turn out to be insufficient in the future.

[Ironside]

I don't know whether you have anything to do with Google AdSense on your websites? I've been with Google AdSense for quite a long time now and my website has more than paid its way. Three years ago I was making between £600 and £700 each month. That more than covered the cost for my server with lots left over. However, the earnings I get from Google have now hit rock bottom and last month it was only £129, this month be lucky if I reach £100.

I'm getting between 2K and 2.5 K of visits each day according to Google analytics. However, the forum is very very quiet these days. I'm starting to think that my particular niche may be dwindling and people are moving on to other types of tropical fish. Silly thing is, my closest rival who has been around for a lot longer than me is now number 11 on Google for our major keyword, I'm still number three. First not as if my website has slipped in the rankings. However, it needs to pay for itself which is why I was looking for cheaper hosting. I think my only alternative is to remove the forum altogether and just keep the articles. I can then move the website onto shared hosting which will be more than suffice. Cost me about £100 a year and I'll probably make anywhere between five and 10 times that if I'm lucky though I'll still have money for diesel and day tickets at the carp pond.

Anyway, thanks for your time in trying to help me work out what resources I need. Basically, it is the forum that uses most of the juice. I've got over 10 years of threads so there is a lot of information. But I'm not going to keep something running if nobody is really interested. They will just have to make do with the articles.

[jonnybhoy]

I pay for Google Adwords, and your post makes sense. When I first started using Adwords, it was a bit of a machine gun approach to ads, and it cost me a lot of money. Then you get wiser to how Adwords works, and filter out negative key phrases, which basically cuts out lots of the wasted clicks. This no doubt cut the revenue to Adsense sites. Not good for people like you, but the upside is that I now spend wiser.