Too many connections & Search Engines

[Veronica]

I have tried to look into the "Too many connections" error from MySQL in the Spanish Forum as replies to a user using one.com shared hosting.
http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php/topic,75876.0.html

By the way there is no moderator at all in the Spanish forum with a lot of posts never replied to.

Here is a summary of my findings

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/too-many-connections.html

A lot of sites only suffer from this problem when Google or any other search bot is visiting.
The best way to resolve this is to add the 'Crawl-delay' parameter in your robots.txt or to set it to a higher number of seconds.

There are many comments on other sites like:

Unfortunately you can't change crawl settings for Google in a robots.txt file, they just ignore it.
The best way to rate limit them is using custom Crawl settings in Google Webmaster Tools.
(look under Site configuration > Settings)

Google Webmaster Tools: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Example of this MySQL configuration parameters that limits the concurrent access:

Thank you for contacting One.com.

One.com offers 24 simultaneous connections per domain account.
The maximum connection limit per server is 2048 but this is a limit on the mysql server which may serve connections from multiple servers.
Should you have anymore inquiries please do not hesitate to contact us through our 24/7 online chat or email us.

Best Regards

Camille

one.com have 1 million domains many of them probably using Coppermine.

Setting up the Google and other search engine parameters for a domain with Coppermine public access
should have documented recommendations by the Coppermine team and it's not a hosting issue.

All "Too many connections" errors are being logged to the "database" log file.

[Jeff Bailey]

Are you asking for a document that explains to the user that their host may limit connections to their database and have it include recommended settings for Webmaster tools?

it's not a hosting issue.

Wouldn't a hosting limitation be a hosting issue?

Either way it's always good to have more information in the docs so if you would like to write it up me or another dev will commit it as long as everyone agrees.

[phill104]

By the way there is no moderator at all in the Spanish forum with a lot of posts never replied to.

Volunteers alway welcome

[Veronica]

I talked to my hosting today and they say that the Google bot is not a problem
but other search engines can block a site totally and can be compared to DDoS attacks.
Suggestion was to test crawl delays up to 30 seconds as these bad bots harvest a site from more than 5 different IP's.

Bottom line after some investigation may be that it's a hosting limitation as a result of contracted service level
A hosting issue should be solved by hosting support and these MySQL limits will not be changed
and redirecting users from the cpg forum to their hosting support because of Too many connections are wrong replies.

I have tried to get more values of concurrent MySQL connections today and the only one responding was http://www.servage.net/
and per domain they have 20 concurrent MySQL connections. For telling me the server level limitation they required my email address.

All other attempts were refused and they only wanted to give the value after I had signed up for a web hosting account.
It's not a good selling point but advertising about unlimited and free other resources is more interesting for them.

My hosting is a medium cost shared hosting https://www.oderland.se/ where the MySQL limit is 500 connections
but the process entries in apache web server is limited to 75 connections.

[Veronica]

Volunteers alway welcome

You should lock the spanish forum and tell your users to post in the english forum until a moderator has been assigned
or you can also use google translator Phill if you want to have the spanish forum open

[phill104]

It will remain open. Occasionally people do respond there. I will add a note that users should post in the English forum if they get no response. It is a shame they the moderators no longer visit and that nobody is willing to take on the task. We apply no pressure, it is up to the moderator how often they visit and offer their help. After all, this is supposed to be a fun hobby, not a job.

[Veronica]

It will remain open. Occasionally people do respond there. I will add a note that users should post in the English forum if they get no response. It is a shame they the moderators no longer visit and that nobody is willing to take on the task. We apply no pressure, it is up to the moderator how often they visit and offer their help. After all, this is supposed to be a fun hobby, not a job.

Where is this note you promised to add Phill?
I can't see that you have added any note.

Last time the spanish speaking moderator (Fabricio Ferrero Dev Team member) visited the forum was April 09, 2012, 05:27:21 am

[phill104]

On the grounds that is is a Spanish forum I was awaiting for one of my Spanish friends to write some words for me.

Please try and keep the subject on topiic and please do not shout with all the bold lettering.

[Veronica]

The spanish forum without replies from moderators is the subject I brought up in this thread
together with a very common problem with Coppermine at shared hostings (Too many connections)
and you promised to add a note which you have NOT done so far after 1 month.

[phill104]

Please do not tell us what we should and should not be doing, ask politely.

http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php/topic,55415.msg270618.html#msg270618

As you speak Spanish and I do not please feel free to start a new thread and in it provide some suitable wording.

Thread closed.