I have been using WPforo for about 5 years now with no apparent problems, although I had noticed the site seemed to be getting a bit slower.
The other day my host said I must reduce rows in database as there was over a million, which is their limit. We did this.
Then, a couple of days ago they said "the account is still using a much higher amount of CPU than most of the accounts on the server with similar traffic, so additional optimization should be done."
I have been trying to look into this and saw that there were far more visitors than I would expect, up to 5.6k some days. So today I added CloudFlare.
Now I have just received an email from host saying that "the resource usage for this account is not only high, but has increased." I have no idea why it is increasing.
They say my choices are "to either remove the WPForo plugin or move the account to a proper hosting environment immediately."
It is a non-profit site run as a hobby and there is no way a VPS can be afforded.
Is there anything I can do?
Hi babrees,
It sounds like you're dealing with a frustrating situation, and I can understand why your host is concerned. The good news is that high CPU usage with WPforo is a known issue that several community members have experienced, and there are some concrete steps you can take to diagnose and resolve it. Since you've already addressed the database row limit, let's focus on the resource consumption itself.
Here's a systematic approach to tackle this problem:
- Check your plugin ecosystem first — Since WPforo is a WordPress plugin, its performance is heavily influenced by other plugins running on your site. Review all your active plugins and identify any that are particularly heavy (caching plugins, SEO plugins, analytics plugins, etc.). Try temporarily disabling non-essential plugins one at a time to see if CPU usage drops. This will help you identify if WPforo is the actual culprit or if it's being bogged down by conflicts with other plugins.
- Review WPforo-specific settings — Check your WPforo admin settings for any features that might be running heavy background processes. Look for settings related to notifications, email digests, or real-time updates that could be consuming excessive resources.
- Monitor your database queries — With over a million rows previously, there may be inefficient queries still running. Ask your host if they can provide you with slow query logs so you can see which queries are taking the longest. This will give you concrete data to work with.
- Consider a staging environment test — If possible, clone your forum to a staging area and disable WPforo temporarily to establish a baseline of what your normal CPU usage should be. This will definitively tell you if WPforo is the primary issue.
Can you share a bit more about your forum size (number of active users, posts, topics) and what version of WPforo you're currently running? Also, do you know if the CPU spike started around the time you updated to version 1.6.0, or has it been gradual? This additional context will help narrow down whether this is a version-specific issue or a general resource optimization problem.
Hi. Thank you for your reply and I apologise for the delay in responding. Unfortunately, not long after I posted and the same day, the host suspended my account. Since then I have been looking for a new host as I was not happy with the way the dealt with the situation.
Today I migrated the site. There are still problems but I deactivated wpForo to see if that would make a difference. It did not.
The new host, bless them, are looking in to the situation for me. I will update you when we find anything!