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benrowton
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April 7, 2018 at 5:19 am
I run houseprizecompetiton.com and last night we were aired on British television. The media attention caused a surge in event registrations which brought the site to a crawl and eventually crashed it. The site is hosted by WordPress who automatically disabled the plugin due to the issue.
Wordpress are telling me that the traffic volumes on the site were not an issue and their servers were fine, however they tell me that the event espresso plugin cannot be supported by them because it is too intensive with database queries.
We have paid for the premium version of Event espresso and this news is extremely disappointing as we will now need to reconfigure the website and change event providers.
We lost thousands of pounds in transactions due to this and missed important exposure. The down time also made us look very amateur. We expect a refund for the plugin and add-ons and would like to know how this has been allowed.
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benrowton
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April 7, 2018 at 5:48 am
Please can you advise a contact number as this is a matter of urgency!
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Josh
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April 7, 2018 at 7:03 am
I’m sorry your host left you high and dry like that. I can recommend switching to one of the recommended hosts listed here:
https://eventespresso.com/requirements/
Generally the recommended hosts will not take actions that involve disabling key functionality of your website without prior warning.
If you’d prefer to request a refund, that’s available here:
https://eventespresso.com/refund-questionnaire/
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benrowton
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April 7, 2018 at 7:07 am
Wordpress say this is the query from EventsEspresso that caused the issue and hence the plugin was deactivated.
SELECT Line_Item.LIN_ID AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_ID’, Line_Item.LIN_code AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_code’, Line_Item.TXN_ID AS ‘Line_Item.TXN_ID’, Line_Item.LIN_name AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_name’, Line_Item.LIN_desc AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_desc’, Line_Item.LIN_unit_price AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_unit_price’, Line_Item.LIN_percent AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_percent’, Line_Item.LIN_is_taxable AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_is_taxable’, Line_Item.LIN_order AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_order’, Line_Item.LIN_total AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_total’, Line_Item.LIN_quantity AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_quantity’, Line_Item.LIN_parent AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_parent’, Line_Item.LIN_type AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_type’, Line_Item.OBJ_ID AS ‘Line_Item.OBJ_ID’, Line_Item.OBJ_type AS ‘Line_Item.OBJ_type’, Line_Item.LIN_timestamp AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_timestamp’ FROM wp_140755456_esp_line_item AS Line_Item WHERE Line_Item.LIN_parent = 105811 ORDER BY Line_Item.LIN_order ASC
Before we look at other options, do you know what is causing this and will it happen again if we switched host?
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Josh
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April 7, 2018 at 7:16 am
That’s a normal query that Event Espresso uses to track the prices (or line items) of each ticket being purchased. Event Espresso uses indexes on that table so it’s actually a performant query. If WordPress has an specific query they can submit an issue to the development team here:
https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/issues
For what it’s worth, your site currently has the Decaf version of Event Espresso 4 activated, so that means:
1) A version of Event Espresso 4 is activated on your website
2) You’re not making use of the premium version yet. You can upgrade to the premium version by logging into your WP dashboard, then go to Event Espresso > General Settings, then click Save, then follow the prompts to upgrade to Caffeinated.
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benrowton
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April 7, 2018 at 7:22 am
When the issue occurred we were using the full version, not decaff. The issue caused event espresso to get disabled automatically by WordPress and in the emergency we re-enabled it as decaff.
WordPress.com is insistent that the query is too intensive and caused the problem. It seems WordPress blame EE, and EE are blaming WordPress leaving us in a very difficult position. I would appreciate your honest professional opinion about what we need to do here.
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Josh
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April 7, 2018 at 9:36 am
I’d like to make it clear I’m not blaming WordPress, but I do think it’s not cool that they shut you down without warning.
This same query is being used on other hosts with no problems. There may be something unique to their infrastructure (formerly Pressable’s infrastructure, if I understand correctly) where that query is a problem.
If that’s the case, the development team would love to hear from them. If they can explain exactly why that query is a problem, the dev team can have the opportunity make an improvement to the query. We do not have the data to know what should be changed.
The best place for them to reach out is an issue report on Github. We’d love to see their rationale for why they think the query is too intensive.
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benrowton
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April 9, 2018 at 3:53 am
Hi Josh,
Many thanks for the response, we were not happy about it being shut down either and have now moved hosts. We are sticking with EE as it otherwise is a great product so we are hoping the issue will be resolved on the new host.
Many thanks
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benrowton
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April 9, 2018 at 4:41 am
Hi there!
We wanted to follow up with you on the deactivation of the plugin event-espresso-core-reg, to give you more information and evaluate options.
We see that you have moved your site away but if you would like to give it another try there are different possibilities:
1) Fix the plugin that was causing strain on the servers:
This was the analysis after our system disabled the plugin:
The plugin was disabled because there was huge peak on this query on the database:
SELECT Line_Item.LIN_ID AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_ID’, Line_Item.LIN_code AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_code’, Line_Item.TXN_ID AS ‘Line_Item.TXN_ID’, Line_Item.LIN_name AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_name’, Line_Item.LIN_desc AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_desc’, Line_Item.LIN_unit_price AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_unit_price’, Line_Item.LIN_percent AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_percent’, Line_Item.LIN_is_taxable AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_is_taxable’, Line_Item.LIN_order AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_order’, Line_Item.LIN_total AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_total’, Line_Item.LIN_quantity AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_quantity’, Line_Item.LIN_parent AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_parent’, Line_Item.LIN_type AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_type’, Line_Item.OBJ_ID AS ‘Line_Item.OBJ_ID’, Line_Item.OBJ_type AS ‘Line_Item.OBJ_type’, Line_Item.LIN_timestamp AS ‘Line_Item.LIN_timestamp’ FROM wp_140755456_esp_line_item AS Line_Item WHERE Line_Item.LIN_parent = 105811 ORDER BY Line_Item.LIN_order ASC
The query itself is not an issue but the problem is that the result is not stored in cache.
When the traffic increases on the site, the query is used repeatedly causing strain on the database.
If you would like to give this information to the plugin developers, they should be able to analyze what is using session or cookies on your site that is preventing that query from being cached.
2) Use a different set up or plugin for event registration.
If you decide to keep you site here, let us know and we will be happy to look into it further.
I you have decided to move your site away, we can help you transfer your domain to your new provider and cancel your plan with us.
Let us know!
Brezo C. – Happiness Engineer at Automattic
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