Having Dreamhost problems.

Apparently we’re using too much CPU time. We haven’t done anything to cause this, our traffic is no more than usual and less than sometimes, we’re not using anywhere near our total bandwidth, and yet suddenly we’re taking up more than our allotted share of CPU. (This was evidentally in the fine print somewhere. It’s really kind of a gyp, because it’s not possible to use anywhere near all the bandwidth they sell you without going over the CPU time that gets mentioned somewhere way down in the user agreement and nowhere in the sales pitch.)

It’s also impossible to fix for two people who only know the barest amount about php, and the instructions from Dreamhost are completely incomprehensible to a non-software engineer. James is a very smart guy, and managed to put the site together using PhPNuke, but this is light-years ahead of what he can possibly do, even if he wasn’t in crunch time for a game that needs to be done next month.

So if these keeps up (and since we don’t know what suddenly caused it to use more time, we have no idea if it’ll stop as suddenly as it came, or continue indefinitely) we have to either take the site down or move it, or fix the problem. We can’t take the site down, as that’s my major income source, moving it’s a royal pain in the ass, and fixing it seems improbable. I suppose we could go back to the old clunky site which doesn’t use PHP, but my heart breaks at the notion.

I am more than a little miffed at Dreamhost, since they keep mention moving to a dedicated server for only $99 a month, which A) Ain’t Gonna Happen, and B) makes the whole thing seem like a bait-and-switch sales device.

Grrrr.

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