HG and a (rather) big site - resource usage?

[Isotonik]

Hello
This is a pre-sales question. I have currently an image gallery (~4000 images) based on 4images script and TextPattern blog. As far as I've seen, the CPU usage is a constant issue in shared plans and I'm pretty worried of potential usage of resources.

I have currently succeeded in minimizing the number of visitors using a free host restrictions provided by 4images (I have maybe two visitors per week but they seldom come back), but paid plans would offer more powerful tools to decrease the server load.

I plan to save server resources by a robots.txt file to block all indexing and creating excessive CIDR-based blocklists, which are designed to block the expected IP-ranges of my potential visitors. The final touch is carried out by creating quite restrictive permissions that block users from seeing full-size images. These procedures would evidently render my site quite unusable, but there would be little if any traffic.

Question: Do blocklists (which may consist of several hundred entries in CPanel) cause any additional strain to the server?

Clever users might try to bypass these restrictions by using proxies and there is little I could do about it, but I've planned to create TOS which prohibits using proxies and a tailored version of my current 403-page with the following text:

"Error 403 - Access denied. You attempted to enter a site hosted by Hostgator. Any HTTP-request from your IP-range is believed to cause excessive load to the servers. As a result, your request was denied. Every attempt to bypass these restrictions may result in report to your ISP and/or legal action against you. Please contact Hostgator.com for more information."

That should do it or do you have better suggestions? If you wish, I can use static HTML-pages if your servers can handle them better than PHP-scripts.

Thanx.

[Goddess Dix]

You only have a couple of visitors a week, who seldom return? And you're looking at solutions to potential CPU usage fror those two visitors a week that would render your site unusable? And you're wanting to have a gallery that no one can see?

I'm sorry, but not following your needs very clearly here.

CPU usage is a constant area of evaluation in shared hosting environements. But unless you're getting a lot of traffic, then you're not going to hit the CPU excessively.

Extensive blocklists will slow your site down, but I don't know how hard they will hit cpu. However, if you don't have a lot of traffic, then why would you go to the effort or trying to block out hundreds of IPs anyway?

And if you do a custom 403, I wouldn't tell them to contact HG, who wouldn't know what the heck they were talking about.

[Isotonik]

Thanx for the answer. I just want to be proactive in my attempts as to fair usage of resources. It is possible that search engines might index the name of my site and not all spiders respect the robots.txt file. As a result, I'm committed to block every attempt to create excessive traffic.

I usually keep very low profile to my site, but I do want it to exist.

[Goddess Dix]

low profile = low cpu usage. what is going to hit cpu resources is almost always a combination of high traffic w/database driven pages, and/or a script run amuck. a few visiting bots can behave badly and run up cpu, but HG has mod_security set up that blocks the vast majority sort of traffic already.

for 99% of shared hosting users, cpu is a total nonissue. those that become successful enough with their sites where they get the traffic to hit cpu, well, by then i expect the sites to have become successful enough to support the expense of a dedi.

good luck to you.

i applaud your dedication to being a good shared hosting citizen, but you're concerns are misplaced.