Receiving a message such as “Resource Limit Reached” on your WordPress website can be annoying. This can occur when pages fail to load, when people accessing your site see an error message, or when you see this message from your host’s control panel.
The cause of such a problem may lie in excessive use of the processor, memory exhaustion, excessive demand simultaneously, or disk access. Nevertheless, each of these problems has their unique reasons behind them, and so will have their respective solution too.
In case of hosting on CloudLinux, the 508 error “Resource Limit Reached” occurs when the limit of entry processes is exceeded. There are other kinds of resource limitations that may cause performance problems and other error types. It becomes imperative to find out what resource is suffering in order to find a solution to the issue.
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What is “resource limit reached”?
There are many hosting companies that offer a certain quota of resources on their servers for each hosting account. This is done to ensure that no single site uses too much of the resource while others don’t get anything.
Limitations may exist for the use of CPU, physical memory, entry process, total number of processes, and disk input/output operations, depending on the hosting environment.
If your site hits a limitation, then the hosting platform may limit further activity or even respond with an error. This varies, depending on the resource as well as your hosting provider’s settings.
It does not necessarily mean that you need a more costly hosting package when you encounter an error related to resource limits. Slow working plug-ins, increased traffic and inefficient background processes may put unnecessary load on your server.
Why Do WordPress Hosting Servers Run Out of Resources?
1. Resource-Intensive Plugins and Themes
Certain plugins and themes in WordPress may run costly database queries, manipulate huge amount of data or even run unnecessary actions on every page load. Backup tools, security scanning software, analytics plugins and page building platforms may also take a toll.
What should be done:
- Look for any recently installed and updated plugins.
- Do a test to find out if they are causing the problem by comparing their resources in a testing server.
- If a particular plugin is guilty, modify the plugin’s settings or use an alternative one.
2. Traffic Increases and Automation Bots
A sudden surge in the number of visitors may strain your resource allocation, especially if there is significant processing in PHP. Automation bots may put similar demands on your system by continually browsing pages, filling in forms, or logging in.
The number of concurrent requests becomes important since a request that takes a long time to execute might take up an entry process. Too many requests that take longer time to process might give you a 508 error without necessarily hitting the CPU capacity.
What should be done:
- Find out the time when the error was logged and analyze any unusual pattern in the number of requests during that particular period.
- Check for sudden increases in website traffic and, if needed, use rate limiting or bot protection to prevent excessive requests from overwhelming your server.
3. Too Many Requests Not Cached
If caching is not done properly, WordPress has to process every request by executing PHP scripts, accessing the database, loading plugins and creating a response for it. This can require too much CPU and PHP processing power in case of high traffic.
Action to take:
- Make sure that page caching is active.
- Examine problems related to frequent cache clearance and non-caching of pages.
- Remember, however, that dynamic pages such as personalized pages and shopping carts still need server processing.
4. Inefficient database queries
All the data required by WordPress including posts, settings, user information and plugin information is stored in the database. Ineffective database queries will slow down the site since many queries can run at the same time.
A big database does not necessarily mean inefficiency. It can be impacted by the query itself, the indexing of the database, and frequency of queries too. See how to optimize your database.
Solution:
- Use software for profiling queries to find out what queries in the database are slow or are consuming too many resources.
- Examine plugin behavior and indexes of the database before any actions, and also make a backup of the database before cleaning it up.
5. WordPress Cron Jobs and Background Processes
Cron jobs and background processes are managed in WordPress by the WP-Cron tool and are used for, among other things, posting on schedule and executing plugin operations.
Overlapping of difficult tasks can lead to competition for processing resources with regular web requests.
What should be done:
- Check the events and schedules. Look into failures and delays of certain activities.
- Perhaps a server-based cron can be used for scheduling actions, but one should not turn off WP-Cron until he has configured an alternative way.
6. Insufficient Host Resources
In some cases, a website will just need more resources than those that can be provided by the host. For instance, an expanding online store will have more concurrent customer requests and database activities than before.
How to act:
- Evaluate the use of resources during low and high levels of traffic.
- In case your website is continuously hitting the cap even after adequate optimization, ensure that your current strategy is capable enough to handle the demands of your website.
- Getting to know how the shared server works will be useful.
How to Find Out Which Resource Limit Was Reached
If you have a hosting solution which uses CloudLinux with cPanel, then the Resource Usage module will provide information about your resource limits, usage statistics, and faults.
| Resource | What it measures | Possible cause of a limitation |
| CPU | Allocated processing capacity for your account | Costly PHP executions or too many requests |
| Physical memory | Memory consumed by the processes running on your account | Costly PHP executions or too many request |
| Entry processes | Number of processes entering your account, usually related to requests | Too many concurrent requests or slow requests |
| Total processes (NPROC) | Number of processes that can be executed by the account | Too many or too many long running processes |
| Disk I/O | Speed of reading/writing data to/from the disk | Lots of database transactions, backing up, or importing |
| IOPS | Number of disk operations per second | Too many reads/writes
|
These restrictions, although similar, cannot be exchanged for each other. An increase in PHP memory would not solve the CPU restriction, and smaller image files would not necessarily solve the entry process restriction.
Quick Ways to Determine the Problem
- Note down the exact error: See whether you are getting a 508 error, server error, or any message from the hosting control panel.
- See resource usage: See the graphs and fault count near the occurrence of the problem. To check the limits your account have has reached, check website’s resource usage in cPanel.
- See if the solution works: Determine if there is an improvement in resource and website issues.
- Address the root cause: After determining the probable cause of the problem, concentrate on fixing the problem instead of making changes to settings unrelated to it.
- Determine the source of the problem: See if your site is using too much CPU, consuming too much memory, has exceeded its entry process limit, or if something else related to the hosting service is the source of the problem.
- Determine the resource that is creating problems: Determine if your website is using too much CPU resources, uses too much memory, exceeds the entry process limit or faces some other hosting limitation.
In case you do not get the necessary information from your hosting control panel, contact your hosting company and ask for the resource that your website exceeded.
Fixing “Resource Limit Reached” Error in WordPress Hosting Services
With a clear understanding of the reasons behind the error, you will know how to proceed with fixing it.
1. Contact the Hosting Provider or Upgrade the Account
If you are unable to find the root cause, you might have some assistance from the hosting provider. Provide the error message, the time at which the error occurred, resource usage charts, and number of faults.
In the case that your website keeps hitting its resource limitations regardless of optimization, it may mean that your current hosting plan will not be able to cope with the situation anymore. You should consider moving to a more suitable plan.
2. Check Background Processes and Database Operations
Background processes may be using lots of resources, particularly if there are many intensive processes running simultaneously. If it is feasible, perform tasks that consume resources during low-traffic times of the day.
Make sure to check functions like backups, imports of databases, and other scheduled tasks that put extra load on your server. Identify slow database queries and investigate issues regarding scheduled tasks failing and/or overlapping.
After implementing the necessary changes, perform tests on the website in order to confirm that it operates as intended.
3. Reduce Plugin Load and Code Optimization
While some plugins, themes, and code functions consume more server resources than other software components, others do not. It is necessary to figure out whether there are any resources-intensive plugins or theme features that can be eliminated from your WordPress website.
4. Make Improvements to Caching
Caching enables WordPress to spend less time on processing pages. The server will send a cached page when needed rather than executing the same PHP scripts and making requests from the database.
In addition to all these benefits, the CDN would also prove helpful for you in terms of lowering the workload of your server because the CDN would handle requests for images, CSS, and JavaScript from its own network.
In case of high CPU utilization, refer to our article about the reasons why WordPress uses too much CPU and how to lower it.
5. Decrease the Number of Requests Running at Once
Should your website be frequently reaching its entry process threshold, check whether any slow requests or a high number of requests simultaneously are causing this problem.
For instance, the requests could be building up due to slow PHP scripts, queries on the database, or even an increase in traffic. The requests could be optimized or even traffic reduced to deal with the problem. An upgrade in the CPU does not automatically solve this issue.
Conclusion
The occurrence of “Resource Limit Reached” signifies the existence of a resource limitation problem for your site, although the error message itself will not explain the entire problem. When you have a CloudLinux hosting account, the 508 error means that the entry process is being restricted.
The first step to addressing this issue is to determine the resource being used up, establish the process behind it, and eliminate that source. The use of a CDN is another way in which this problem could be solved by serving your static files such as images, CSS and JavaScript files from its own servers.
However, if this still does not resolve the problem, it might be the right time to move to hosting that provides sufficient resources for your website’s activities.
Looking for Hosting that will Meet your Future Needs?
With an increasing number of users visiting your WordPress website and adding various functionalities to it, your needs for resources may go up. With HarmonWeb, you can discover different possibilities for choosing hosting which meets the needs of your website.
Select a hosting package that will be able to support the requirements of your website at present but will also be capable of meeting your future needs.
