What's causing such a huge server load?
 

Hello everyone. I'm running VB 3.7.2 (about to upgrade, but afraid of breaking something) with 347 members, and only six mods:

Banner Rotator
Flashchat Integration
Flashchat: Admin Panel Integration
vBadvanced CMPS
vBSEO :: Sitemap Generator
Welcome Headers

I've been exceeding my CPU usage limit set by my host for almost as long as my forum has been running. I'm now on and exceeding the final shared plan and my next and only option is to go to a dedicated plan. This seems quite unreasonable for only having 347 members. Here are my current usage stats:

Current / Allowed (period average) / Percentage (%)
Traffic (MB) 300.40/85333.33/0.35%
CPU (Mins) 59.60/64.00/93.12%
SQL (Conqueries) 996593/1048576/95.04%

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

From several second hand reports I've heard, FlashChat is supposed to be intensive resource hog.

Oh no! My users love it :(

Any chat is a resource hog. You may want to try a shoutbox instead. A well written shoutbox will log users out after only a minute of inactivity, thus sparing server load.

Simple enough to test; just disable the chat and see if your cpu goes down.

Will the Java chat's use less resources than the Flash-based chats?

Sure you dont have an image resizer installed?

To be honest, I'm a noob when it comes to vBulletin admin. I haven't installed any image resizer that didn't come with vBulletin, I know that much.

If the FlashChat integration is that important to your members, I would recommend shopping around for better hosting options. These days there are some very good deals out there with better bandwidth and space options then what is commonly used.

My problem isn't the bandwidth or space, it's the load on the CPU. Is migration a forum based website to another host fairly straight-forward or is it pretty complicated?

But fundamentally, we're talking about your server's performance and it's ability to cope with things.

Migration is fairly straightforward, though it involves a couple of steps you may have never done before. But the manual explains it pretty simply. Basically, you back up your database using a SSH/Telnet program, download all your hard files, re-upload vBulletin files to the new server and reinstall, re-upload all your old hard files and restore your backup using the same SSH/Telnet program.