Sometimes you may notice this error on your website: "508 Error - Resource Usage Limit Reached"
This error is related to the LVE resource usage limits, which we describe in more detail here: What are LVE resource limits?
To fix and prevent such error, there are steps we recommend all website owners take:
1) Be aware of the current resource usage by checking your cPanel control panel
Please login to your cPanel control panel and navigate to Metrics -> Resource Usage.
On the Resource Usage page, the dashboard provides an overview of recent issues in the last 24 hours. Ideally, it should say "no issues".
The 'Current Usage' tab provides graphs/data for current and past usage. Ideally, you should see low to medium usage on the graphs, and no 'faults' recorded.
2) Investigate any spikes in resource usage
If there have been any issues, you should review the 'Current Usage' tab to see what resources are spiking, and review the 'Snapshot' tab to find the cause of the spike.
The current usage graphs/data are constantly updated 24x7 to reflect the real-time usage on your hosting service.
A snapshot is created any time a process has caused a resource to spike. The information in a snapshot can help to identify what process is responsible for the resource spike. The snapshot captures a list of the HTTP processes, PHP processes and database queries running at that time, and the resource usage for each one.
Please note some processes will use as much resources as available to them, normally to complete in the quickest time possible. For example, a script to update your website or import a new database could use 100% of resources and take 20 seconds, instead of using 20% of resources, but taking 100 seconds. WordPress websites may become temporarily inaccessible when running core/plugin updates.
3) Keep your website software up to date
Even if your website content remains static, the resource usage on your hosting account will fluctuate over time, impacted by website visitors and hardware/software technology. Our advice is to have a regular maintenance schedule to check your website software and apply updates.
For example, WordPress is an incredibly popular site and blogging software available on all hosting plans at Maxer Host. Due to the popularity of WordPress, there are regular updates to the core software, themes and plugins. To prevent website security or performance issues, it's very important to keep all parts of WordPress up-to-date. If you use this software or a similar CMS (Content Management System) or e-commerce software, you should consider automated updates or check manually for updates on a regular schedule. Please discuss this with your web developer or IT person.
4) Optimise your website content/plugins to use less resources
This article has useful tips on how to optimise your website for the best speed/performance:
[[link to page containing tips on general site optimisation]]
This article has tips specific to WordPress software:
[[link to page containing tips on wordpress site optimisation]]
5) Know your audience
Your cPanel control panel provides multiple tools for you to assess your website audience and traffic. Most of the tools can be found under the "Metrics" section in cPanel, such as:
- The "Visitors" page in cPanel displays detailed information about recent visits to your website. This information helps you to learn about your audience and monitor frequent visitors. It also helps you locate and fix errors, such as missing pages or broken links.
- The "AWStats" and "Webalizer" pages provide detailed statistical charts and graphs to analyse your website traffic. It includes a breakdown of visitors by web browser, operating system and country. It lists the most popular visitor user-agents (useful to identify bots), the most frequent HTTP status codes (useful to identify errors), and the IP addresses than consume the most bandwidth (useful to identify bandwidth hogs/abuse).
- The "Bandwidth" page provides an overview of the monthly bandwidth usage. It includes a breakdown by website and service type (HTTP, FTP, POP3, IMAP, SMTP), and graphs/charts showing the daily and hourly usage.
6) Isolate accounts and websites
Each cPanel hosting account has its own resources. If you have multiple websites sharing the same hosting account, one website may impact speed/performance of another. If you run a business that has multiple websites, you should review their resource usage and consider splitting large/busy websites onto their own hosting plan.
For performance and security reasons, we do not recommend sharing hosting accounts. For data protection reasons, each company/business should have its own hosting account. Read more about this here: Why two businesses should not share one hosting account
If you are a designer/developer, you should have a reseller hosting plan or a virtual/dedicated server. You should not share a hosting plan with your clients.
7) Plan for growth and special events
You should use the past/current resource usage charts/graphs to forecast future usage. After reviewing the current resource usage (in step 1), you should forecast the future usage. If the graphs show any resources near their limits, you may want to consider upgrading your hosting plan or hosting type.
8) Consider upgrading to a larger hosting
As a business, we're always happy to sell you a larger service, but honestly, we prefer not to do it, unless you really need it. We strongly recommend all clients have an experienced web developer or IT person to maintain and optimise their website(s). Too often we encounter clients wanting to upgrade their hosting because their website is badly designed, not well optimised, or using old/faulty plugins. We strongly recommend you follow steps 1-6, because a website that has been optimised and kept up-to-date will normally use less resources and save you money.
If you have any questions, please contact our support team by submitting a support ticket.
Updated by SP on 26/01/2023
