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    • 39708
    • 1 Posts
    Recently completed a new site using MODX Revolution. Everything works great but about once a week the site goes down - that is, the home page doesn't load, so the site is effectively unavailable.

    Going into MODX and clearing the cache fixes the problem every time.

    I've set the home page itself to not be cached, right from the start, but that hasn't changed anything.

    The error log shows next to nothing, just an occasional "(ERROR @ /index.php) Could not retrieve data to cache for resource XXX" – but the timing of these does not seem to be related to when the site goes down.

    We've never had this issue with any other MODX site. This is the only site that's hosted on GoDaddy shared hosting. However the folks at GoDaddy say there's nothing wrong on their end, and I don't necessarily want to point the finger at them.

    Any suggestions?
      • 19369
      • 1,098 Posts
      Some time ago I have built a website on Godaddy (with MODX Evolution), and my experience has been terrible, it took me 5 minutes to open the database, and the website back-end and front-end was extremely slow. Godaddy is really good for buying domain names, but the hosting is the worst that I've ever seen.
      • I'll second what microcipcip says: GoDaddy's hosting is simply awful. Their techs don't admit that anything is wrong even when error messages clearly prove otherwise. What is probably happening is this: their database is getting hammered. If the hammering is mild, you get an error message from MODX saying "dude, where's my data?". If the hammering is more severe, the entire site goes down.


        A couple related links for you:

        My strong recommendation is to migrate that site to another host. You'll end up with better service and often end up saving some $$$.
        • This happens to others on GoDaddy (and other hosts) as well:
          Issue #7324

          There is a mention of phpThumbOf and of all the errors we see that snippet produces the most.

          I wonder if a cron could be setup to delete the cache folder at particular intervals since Clear Cache doesn't actually entirely clear the cache?

          • Clear Cache doesn't actually entirely clear the cache?

            Whoa... clearing the cache should definitely clear the cache. You may have something else going on, e.g. permissions misconfigured for PHP on the server. You can set up a cron job to delete the cache directory, sure, but that's sort of ignoring the problem (even if phpThumbOf is a pain).
            • Whenever we clear the cache, when you go into the file system and go to core/cache, we always have files there. I had thought the calls to manually clear your cache before migrating was confirmation that a lot of the cache remains present on the server.

              This happens on all the different servers we use. It's definitely not permissions and if it's a misconfigured PHP than this is the only problem that is has and we love to figure out how to properly configure it.

              I am aware that croning a regular clearing of the files in the cache folder is "ignoring the problem" however, it's a possible temporary solution to waiting for your site's home page to disappear and then going into the Manager and clearing the cache (which does fix the problem whenever we've run into this problem for clients (also on GoDaddy).

              Our clients are aware GoDaddy is an issue but it does happen on other servers. We beg them to get off GoDaddy. So far we have only one remaining.
              • Which files? It's actually a cache refresh in the case of the system_settings and context_settings; IOW, those files never get deleted, just updated by the process. In the case of GoDaddy, the issue is that flock is not functional on their servers with PHP. Until we add fallback semaphore locking into MODX itself, that will work reliably without depending on flock, I would urge you to avoid hosting MODX on GoDaddy and find a better host.