vBulletin Causes Site to Crash

[shaqoneal]

Hey everybody,

I have found out that vBulletin is causing my site to crash. The server load, memory usage, etc is perfect, no problems at all during the crash. I can access WHM/Cpanel, the FTP and everything works perfect except the site itself. This includes non-vB pages. When the site crashes vBulletin and non-vB pages don't work. What I am trying to say is the HTTP pages don't work.

I've tried to restart apache, but that doesn't help. What DOES help is when I rename the folder for vBulletin (from forums to like forums5) so none of my visitors can access it. Once I rename the folder so that vB inaccessible to my visitors, the site works! Within minutes of making it available to the visitors again, it crashes. And during this time, as I said before, WHM shows everything is perfect. (see here: http://i42.tinypic.com/w7ikrb.jpg)

I asked my sites server management what the problem is and they said the problem is with the file references. They said the connections from HTTP references affect apache performance and are causing my site to crash. Their solution was that I should reference vB's files by their absolute path and that this will reduce the http connections from the server IPs internally.

But my question is, doesn't vBulletin already do this? And if not what can I do to make it do so? How can I optimize vB for apache and how can I solve my problem?

Any help is much appreciated!
Thank you.

Edit: I would just like to add that this problem just started happening on like the 25th. I have not make any changes to vB by adding mods anytime recently. Prior to the 25th, vB has been working perfectly for over a year. Also, I am using vB 3.8.2