The CPU usage involves the Central Processing Unit(s) of the web server the customer's account is hosted on.
It is subject to some regulations. Each hosting account has a CPU usage limit, which, when reached, may result
in the account being suspended. Learn more in this article: What is meant under CPU usage and how do I monitor
it?

Go to the Live Stats > Load Stats section of your Web Hosting Control Panel to see daily statistics for your
account's CPU usage. You can compare the CPU usage in the Load Stats section with the allowed limit for your
account, which you can see in the Account Usage table located on the left side of your Web Hosting Control
Panel.

To reduce the CPU usage of your account, there are several general rules that you should follow:

* Upgrade all third-party web applications to the latest stable release available (Joomla, WordPress and
any other content management or blog systems, forums, galleries or any other scripts that you have installed)
* If any of the web applications that you use have addons or plugins, make sure they are upgraded to the
latest availble versions as well
* Remove any unused web applications and/or plugins/addons that you have installed
* Activate caching for any web applications that you use that have this option
* If you have developed your script(s) yourself, try reducing the number of MySQL/PostgreSQL queries and
optimize your scripts to use less processing time.

If you need to deal with a high CPU usage problem and reduce the CPU usage, you must first identify the
reasons for the high CPU usage. Unfortunately, this is often quite difficult, especially if you are using
third-party web applications such as forums, content management or blog systems, etc. that you have not
developed yourself and have little or no knowledge at all about their inner working. There are, however,
several things that you could check that would at least give you an idea where you should start:

1. Identify the website that is most likely to be responsible for the high CPU usage.
If you host more than one website (domain/subdomain) in your account, start by identifying which one
is most visited and which one generates most traffic - this is probably the one that’s responsible for the
high CPU usage. Go to the Live Stats > Bandwidth Stats section and find out which of your hosts (domains or
subdomains) has generated the most traffic for the past day and for the current month.
2. Identify the file that is most likely responsible for the high CPU usage (if any).
Once you have established which website has generated the most traffic by visiting the Bandwidth Stats
menu, go to the Live Stats > Traffic Stats section of your Web Hosting Control Panel and view the traffic
stats for this domain/subdomain for the current month. Look for the file(s) that have generated most traffic -
you can find them in the Top 10 of XX Total URLs By KBytes table. Look for any PHP/CGI files in this list that
have generated unusually large amounts of traffic. This file(s) is most likely the reason for the high CPU
usage and you should consider optimizing it.
3. Identify the visitor/bot that is most likely responsible for the high CPU usage (if any).
Like in step 2, look at the monthly traffic stats for your domain/subdomain and look for the
visitor/host that has generated most traffic this month. You will find the list under Top 10 of XX Total Sites
By KBytes - look for any hosts that have generated unusually large amounts of traffic (compared to the rest) -
it would either be an IP address or a hostname of the kind botname.some-domain.com. You may want to block the
access of this host(s) or at least restrict it to reduce the CPU usage of your account.

If you are still unable to reduce the CPU usage of your account after following the advices given in this
article, you should either look for the help of a professional developer or simply consider the fact that you
need either a dedicated server or at least a VPS or a semi-dedicated server.

This Article was submitted by Duty Free Hosting - If you found it useful, please consider them as your host