How high are the CPU load and RAM consumption of your website? How much memory is actually still free? Which cron jobs are currently running and what do your log files actually look like? The answers to these and other questions provide important information about the status of your website. We show you what these values mean and introduce our website monitoring - the "Box Status".

Regardless of whether you're an agency or freelancer managing websites for clients or "just" responsible for your own website - the right monitoring is essential. With an overview of the most important information about the status of your WordPress website, you can react more quickly should a problem occur. 

After many of our customers requested a website monitoring feature, our technical team has been busy developing the new "Box Status" for the Raidboxes dashboard. The monitoring feature is fully included in all our hosting plans. In this article, we explain how to work with the Box Status and interpret the displayed data correctly. 

The box status at a glance

The status area provides you with a whole range of information about your website, its behavior and the server. You can access it with just a few clicks via the Raidboxes dashboard - either via the list view of your boxes or via the box overview of the corresponding box.

You can see the following values and information about the status of your website in the Status box. We will go into some of these in more detail in a moment:

• CPU utilization: This value shows whether your site is currently overloaded. With the help of your box's logs, you can then determine exactly what the reason for a possible overload is.
  
• RAM utilization: The RAM utilization shows you the current memory consumption of your vServer. This value is also an important indicator for the overload of your website.
  
• SSD allocation: In our website monitoring you can also see how much storage space your box is currently using or how much is still free. For more details on memory usage, we recommend our "Disk Usage Sunburst" plugin
  
• Cronjobs: The box status also gives you an overview of your website's cronjobs. If a cronjob hangs up, you can delete it directly via the box status.
  
• BOX history: The changelog in your website status shows you all server-side changes that have been made to your BOX to date.
  
• Logfiles: You also have access to all of your site's logs via the box status: the error log, the debug log and the access log. These are important for debugging errors or problems on your website.
  
• WordPress version: Our box status shows you which WordPress version your website is running on. You can also fix the WordPress version here to prevent automatic WordPress updates.

How do I read the graphs in the box status?

CPU and RAM utilization are the two most important values in the status overview of your Box. The graphs show you whether your site is overloaded and help you to analyze errors and problems.

You can filter and adjust both graphs - i.e. the CPU and RAM utilization - in the box status according to your needs. They work in exactly the same way:

• The graphs show the measured values for the last 24 hours
• The measuring points are one minute apart and are average values
• You can display a desired period in more detail by drawing a frame around the desired period within the graph. The view then enlarges accordingly.
• For clarity, the time at 00:00 is marked by a fine gray line (vertical) on the time axis.
• In addition, there are two colored (orange and red) horizontal markings. These are only reading aids. The presence of the lines themselves does not indicate a potential overload of your page.
• If you click on the arrow symbol at the top right and then on the graph, you can hold down the left mouse button and drag the view to the left or right.

CPU utilization - What does that mean? 

The number of vCores in your box always depends on the selected tariff. A Starter Box, for example, has one vCore - a box in the Pro XL package has four. 

The y-axis (the vertical axis) shows the CPU utilization in percent. The x-axis (the horizontal axis) shows the time curve. The orange line marks the 100 percent utilization limit at each point in time and the red line marks the 200 percent utilization limit.

How do I interpret the CPU value correctly? 

The CPU value describes the utilization of the virtual processor cores of your box as a percentage. A high value means that a lot of computing has to be done on the box, a low value means that little computing has to be done. The value results from all processes that have to be calculated by the CPU.

Too much CPU usage can cause your website to stop working properly. The most common error that occurs in this context is a 504 timeout.

The CPU load on your box can significantly exceed the one hundred percent threshold. This is not necessarily a sign that an error is occurring on your box, but it definitely indicates that an event has generated an extremely high computing load on your box.

If you want to see the exact value at a specific point in time, simply move the cursor over the graph to the desired point in time. As soon as you move the cursor within the graph, lines appear parallel to both axes, giving you the exact axis values (time and CPU utilization) from the respective point.  

My CPU load is high - why is this and what can I do?

The fact that the graph of your CPU indicates a high load can have various causes. In general, this is not an indication that your website is not accessible or that it is not working correctly. It simply means that your CPU has to work particularly hard at certain times. Reasons for this could be, for example, a lot of hits on your site or cron jobs. 

What is an overload?

Occasional load peaks do not mean that your CPU is overloaded. You can only speak of an overload if the CPU load is significantly above 100 percent over a longer period of time. 

If the CPU load is above the high or very high load range for a longer period of time, this is referred to as a high CPU load. Even a high CPU load is not necessarily a cause for concern, but merely indicates that a lot of computing is required on your website. A high load is therefore to be expected during periods of high traffic.

My website is overloaded, what can I do?

If your WordPress website is overloaded, i.e. shows a CPU load of well over 100 percent over a longer period of time, this can lead to errors and failures.

So if your website is overloaded, it is important that you start looking for the actual problem straight away. Typical errors are, for example

• Lots of traffic (can be analyzed via the access log)
• Lots of traffic due to unwanted bots (can be analyzed via the access log)
• a large arithmetic operation on the box, e.g. an export of data
• Cronjobs have hung up

More CPU cores = more power?
One possible optimization measure for (expected) high loads due to a lot of traffic - e.g. due to a TV appearance or a large advertising campaign - is to increase the CPU cores. After all, the server must be able to cope with more load when there are many visitors and corresponding database queries (e.g. displaying products according to various filters). We like to use the example of a chip shop to explain the principle:

Imagine the server of your WordPress website is a chip shop. Each employee of the chip shop represents a CPU core. If there is only one salesperson behind the counter, only one request can be processed at a time. If there are only a few visitors, this is not a problem at first.

However, if the number of visitors is so high that the chip shop is overwhelmed by the requests, more employees (i.e. more CPU cores) are needed. The more thresters available in the chip shop, the more orders can be processed at the same time. In other words, too little CPU capacity and increased traffic can lead to an overload. You can recognize this in the box status.

In this context, it is important to understand that more CPU cores do not automatically improve the loading time of your website - after all, the individual cores work at the same speed. Rather, increasing the number of cores ensures that more requests can be processed simultaneously and your store is not overloaded.

RAM utilization

The amount of RAM available to you also depends on the selected tariff. A website on the Starter plan, for example, has 2 gigabytes of RAM - a website on the Pro XL plan, on the other hand, has 8 gigabytes. 

The x-axis (the horizontal axis) of the RAM graph shows the selected time period. The y-axis (the vertical axis) shows the RAM utilization value in GB. The markings for 70 percent and 85 percent utilization are only reading aids. They do not indicate that your RAM is currently or has been utilized accordingly in the past. Otherwise, this graph works in exactly the same way as the CPU utilization graph. 

My RAM utilization is high - why is this and what can I do?

There can be various reasons why your RAM utilization graph shows a high value. In general, a high RAM utilization is not an indication that your site is not accessible or that it is not working correctly. It simply means that your RAM has to work particularly hard at certain times. Reasons for this can be, for example, plugins and themes that require a lot of RAM to function.

What is an overload?

Occasional peaks in consumption do not mean that your website is overloaded. You can only speak of an overload if the RAM load is 100 percent over a longer period of time. An overload can be caused, for example, by parallel work in the WordPress admin dashboard - especially when working with page builders - or with large imports.

What is high capacity utilization?

If the RAM utilization is in the high or very high range for a longer period of time, this is referred to as high RAM usage. Even a high RAM usage is not necessarily a cause for concern, but merely indicates that many processes need to be processed on your site. This can occur, for example, if you are working with plugins or themes that require a lot of PHP memory.

However, if your website's RAM is fully utilized, i.e. it is at 100 percent for a longer period of time, errors and failures may occur on your site.

WordPress cronjobs

All cronjobs of your box are also displayed in your box status. This allows you to check directly whether problems with your website may be related to the cronjobs. The list not only shows you all running cronjobs, you can also terminate individual cronjobs directly. 

If you are unsure what cronjobs are, how they work or how you can find out if cronjobs are causing problems on your site, it is best to read our background article on cronjobs and ask a web design professional for help.

Change log of your website

The change log is a new feature that you can only view in your Box status. It shows you at what time which user carried out which action on the Box. 

Important: These logs only show changes at server level or in the Raidboxes dashboard, not changes made in WordPress.

In the example above, we switched SSL on for a test box and switched it off again about five minutes later.

If you find changes from the user Raidboxes in your change log, these changes were made by a Raidboxes Super Admin. Entries with the user SYSTEM are automatic changes made by our system.

Log files

You can access the access, error and WP debug log of your site directly via the Status box. Important: To be able to use the WP Debug Log, you must first activate it.

We look forward to your input!

If you have any further questions or feedback about our website status or the monitoring data, please leave us a comment. If you have specific questions about your box, please contact our colleagues directly in the support chat or at [email protected].