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    Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

    Despite getting less and less shoppers, one of my sites keeps going over the bandwidth limit. We've used nearly 15 gigs of bandwidth this last month - that's five gigs over our allotted 10 gigs of bandwidth.

    Most likely this is due to our Wordpress blog on our domain, which receives the majority of our traffic.

    For example: Our wordpress site had 30K views last month, while our ecommerce pages only had 10.5K views last month.

    Traffic was split 50/50 between visitors from the USA (our main selling region) and visitors outside the USA. Quite frankly, I would be happy if NO visitors from outside the USA and Canada come to our blog, so if there is an effective way to block NON-USA traffic to our blog, then that would be a good starting point.

    Aside from that, is there a free CDN where I can host my blog images?

    I have tried using the logs provided by Miva for better analyzing which pages are the biggest resource hogs, but unfortunately the webalyzer stats are apparently slightly worse than using a Magic 8 ball and only slightly better than using Miss Cleo...

    Miva tech support has confirmed with me that POST requests don't count against bandwidth, so bots that are trying to spam my wordpress blog are not the culprit. (Apparently, only GET requests count against bandwidth usage.)

    I hope someone out there has some ideas aside from "just buy more bandwidth"

    Thanking you in advance.

    P.S. I would rather keep the blog and the shopping cart on the same domain since that helps out with SEO.
    Mark Romero
    ~~~~~~~~

    #2
    Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

    Have you tried Cloudflare?
    Thanks,

    Rick Wilson
    CEO
    Miva, Inc.
    [email protected]
    https://www.miva.com

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

      An inexpensive, do it yourself method would be to move ALL static content such images and large download files (like PDFs) to an amazon cloud server. You'd probably need to change a bunch of template codes, but other than that, not much different. For example, for product images, you'd use something like:

      src="s4.amazonaws.com/client-name/account/&mvt:product:image;"

      of course, you'll want to make sure that you replicate the 'graphics/00000001' path on the cloud service or change your database references. (And yes, if you are using image machine you have a LOT of templating changes to make.)
      Bruce Golub
      Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

      Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
      phosphormedia.com

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

        Hi there, Bruce and Rick:

        Thanks for your suggestions. I will look into them tonight.
        Mark Romero
        ~~~~~~~~

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

          Make sure your 404 page is as small in size as reasonably possible. Wordpress sites get attacked all day long, and by all day long, I mean thousands and thousands of requests all day every day from people trying to look for exploitable versions, exploitable themes and plugins, etc. A heavy 404 page (both the one at the site/server level, and the not found page within wordpress if you use permalinks), means you're serving that heavy content with each and every bogus request. If someone hits your site 10,000 times per day looking for exploitable files that don't exist, and your 404 page is 100kb, you've just consumed a gig of traffic for non-human visitors.
          David Hubbard
          CIO
          Miva
          [email protected]
          http://www.miva.com

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

            I completely get what Mark is saying. Its up and down all the time. Last month I went over, grabbed another gig and a few days later it went down to a point of not needing that extra. I have no idea (Well David explains it) where all these people come from. There certainly not all customers that's for sure.
            Dan

            Girlfriends Lingerie - "Keeping It Sexy!"
            Sexy Lingerie - Twitter - Facebook- Pinterest - YouTube

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

              David, would using an image for 404 work as the image itself should be cached?
              Bruce Golub
              Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

              Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
              phosphormedia.com

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                Originally posted by Bruce - PhosphorMedia View Post
                David, would using an image for 404 work as the image itself should be cached?
                No, because most of the things generating 404's are not humans using legit browsers, they're scripts that just hammer away regardless of what is served back.
                David Hubbard
                CIO
                Miva
                [email protected]
                http://www.miva.com

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                  Most WordPress themes have a custom 404 page. You can modify it in the Appearance > Themes> Editor > 404.php

                  I also created a lightweight 404.html page in the WordPress root and added an ErrorDocument directive in the .htaccess

                  Code:
                  ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
                  http://www.alphabetsigns.com/

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                    I had a similar issue with a site and after a lot of messing around, we discovered that StoneEdge Order Manager was the culprit. When it was connecting, it was re downloading all the order data each time it connected (old and new). So if you have any 3rd party shipping, accounting or order management software that is connecting to Miva, you might want to check the settings and see what it is doing.
                    Richard Waters

                    www.MivaWebmaster.com
                    [email protected]
                    Tel: 541-943-3268

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                      Thanks for the tip, Richard.

                      Unfortunately for me, I don't have any thrid-party apps that would possibly connect to the site. No order fulfillment type apps (no shipworks, no stoneedge, nothing like that).
                      Mark Romero
                      ~~~~~~~~

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                        Regarding Cloudflare:

                        1) Is it possible to use with the Miva storefront? It looks like I would need to buy a separate SSL? Would there not be other problems, too?

                        2) If it is not possible / not advisable to use it with the Miva store, then is there a way to host JUST the wordpress directory 9which is located in the /blog/ director on my site on cloudflare?

                        Thanks in advance.
                        Mark Romero
                        ~~~~~~~~

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                          We have a number of customers using Cloudflare with Merchant; it works well. You don't need a new SSL; they generate one on their side that is served to visitors, so it does prevent you from using an EV SSL if that's a concern.
                          David Hubbard
                          CIO
                          Miva
                          [email protected]
                          http://www.miva.com

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                            Thank you, David:

                            I will look into it further.

                            Anyone know if that would affect my google analytics reporting though?

                            Thanks in advance.
                            Mark Romero
                            ~~~~~~~~

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Keep Going Over Bandwidth Limit (Despite Lack Of Customers)

                              Shouldn't change anything. Since GA is processed client-side, it's still the same visitor seeing the same content and reporting the same things back to GA.
                              David Hubbard
                              CIO
                              Miva
                              [email protected]
                              http://www.miva.com

                              Comment

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