Hello. I would appreciate some help/advice.

My host Lunarpages recently informed me that I was using too many resources - CPU and MEM. I had three sites hosted on my shared account all using the Atahualpa theme. I removed one site to wordpress.com and after reading a mass of stuff about website optimisation and running my main Lunarpages site through CloudFlare the CPU usage is way down to less than 1%. But the MEM is still over 2% (it's apparently supposed to be less than this).

All comments are currently turned off for posts over 14 days old (I don't want them to be!), plugins and wordpress are up to date.

Plugins installed on leahwhitehorse.com:-

AddToAny Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons
Akismet
Easy Facebook Like Button
Feedburner Feedsmith
Googlesitemaps (I've taken off the automated redrawing of maps - I'll do it manually)
My Page Order
Wordpress Database Backup
WP-DBManager
WP Super-Cache

Plugins installed on Luatarot.com:-
Akismet
My Page Order
Page Links to
Wordpress Facebook Like Plugin
WP Supercache


Lua Tarot is on the backburner so only received about 5 views a day. Leahwhitehorse receives around 150 unique views a day (about 6000 page views since December 1st). I'm only a little fish in a big pond so really my web host's suggestion of VPS/Dedicated hosting is a bit ridiculous.

Could someone tell me whether this theme could be contributing to high MEM usage? I don't really understand what the MEM is - assuming it's memory?

I notice that a theme update is available but now I'm so worried I don't know whether if I update it, things will get even worse. I'm not having any joy getting answers from my web host and feel like I have now hit a brick wall.

Some advice would be much appreciated.

My main site is www.leahwhitehorse.com - backburner project is www.luatarot.com

your main site seems to be twenty-eleven

Hello - I just changed it today in desperation but I hate the twenty eleven theme. I just don't know what to do. The whole thing has reduced me to tears. I've lost so much time in the past two week trying to read everything and understand it all and implement changes. My whole life is on hold.

Please can you tell me whether this theme uses a lot of MEM and does it mean memory. If it doesn't, do you happen to know what could cause high MEM use when the CPU is now low? I am just desperate for an answer from someone, somewhere.

This i s not an easy question to answer. CPU usage and MEM (memory) usage are two different things.
Is the server a *nix machine or widnos machine?
What version of MySQL is it using?
Is it tuned?
What version of PHP?
Is the DB on the same server?
What do 'they' mean by to much? ie how much is too much?

Each peice pf code uses memory, each plugin the Theme, wordpress itself. There is a plugin that will show memory usage and with twenty-eleven and only the memory plugin - 27.06MB are used - with Atahualpa it is 28.8 MB so Atahualpa uses 1.74MB more that Twenty-Eleven so it is only 6% of the memory used. Is that too much

That depends on how many shared sites the host is trying t o squeeze on one server and generally the cheeper th ehosting package the more sites are hosted.

I know this isn't an answer but everything is a trade off and there are many many variables.

Hi
Thanks for taking the time to answer.

To answer your questions
Is the server a *nix machine or widnos machine?
Sorry, I don't know. I can't see this information anywhere

What version of MySQL is it using?
MySQL client version: 5.1.54

Is it tuned?
I don't know what this means? I regularly go into phpadmin and click on all tables to repair and then optimise.

What version of PHP?
Version 5

Is the DB on the same server?
I assume so. I can see it all on my cpanel

What do 'they' mean by to much? ie how much is too much?
Both CPU and MEM usage have to be lower that 2% usage each

Thank you for comparing Atahualpa with Twenty Eleven. There really isn't that much difference from your figures. I will see how my host reacts to the changes I've made although I certainly hope I can reinstall Atahualpa as it's a wonderful theme. I do understand that it is a combination of factors but having ruled out factor after factor I was only really left with the theme to consider.

Sorry, I meant all those questions ritorically. I just wanted to point out some of the variables when you start talking about performance. And by 'they' I meant your host. 'They' say you are using to many resources. You could look at that and say 'they' don't have enought resources avaliable. Depends on which side of the fece you are standing.