My host has sent me a warning
"Quota exceeded", "disk space full", "abnormal processor usage", "database locked": these are not sales reminders. They announce throttling or suspension if nothing changes, and they describe a symptom, never a cause. Here is how to trace what is really consuming.
Each message names a different resource
- Disk space full: the files are overflowing — backups, logs, unresized images, temporary files never purged.
- Database quota reached: the tables have grown, often three or four of them out of several hundred.
- Abnormal processor usage: the number or weight of incoming requests, not the volume stored.
- Too many simultaneous processes: a concurrency problem, often tied to automated scanning or a badly sized scheduled task.
A full disk: what takes up the room
On a shop, space almost never goes into the code. It goes into four places you can identify in minutes. Automatic backups written into a directory of the site and never deleted: by far the leading cause, doubling the space used on every run. Logs, both error and access, which reach several gigabytes when one error repeats thousands of times a day.
Then product images: each visual is generated in several formats, and the variants of deleted products stay behind. Finally temporary files and the compiled cache, which regenerate but do not always clean up after themselves. Deleting blindly is risky; measuring each directory’s size first is not.
Processor usage: telling traffic from waste
A usage warning does not mean your site is popular. In most cases I see, the load comes from requests that earn nothing: scraping robots walking every filter of every category, a statistics module writing a row on every page view, a scheduled task recomputing the whole catalogue every hour, or an unindexed query scanning a full table on every display.
- Server access logs give the real breakdown: which addresses, which pages, at what frequency.
- Human traffic spreads across product pages; automated scanning spreads across filter and search pages.
Carry on with the right page
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My host has suspended my site
When the warning has already become a suspension, and the cause is abuse.
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Choosing e-commerce hosting
Which limits are really worth comparing before changing plan.
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Cleaning the database
Which tables grow most, and which can be purged safely.
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The database and its indexes
Why an unindexed query drives processor usage up.
Describe your need in one minute
A few targeted questions so I can reply with an estimate rather than another questionnaire.