10 replies to this topic

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

I first started using PageLines products back in March 2009. After a long time of using iBlog, I switched away from PageLines and started using the Twenty Ten theme. I thought I'd check in and see how things have progressed with PageLines. So, today, from within my WordPress dashboard, I installed PageLines 1.1.1 and then was unable to get to my dashboard. Instead, the screen would go blank, or I'd get a message, "Fatal Error: Allowed memory stize of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 7680 bytes) in wp-includes/class-wp-admin-bar.php on line 379." Hoping to get a quick answer, I wrote to Andrew's personal email address since that's all I had from some exchanges back in 2009. He kindly wrote me a prompt reply from his mobile phone. I was surprised and grateful for such a quick reply. His response was, "Looks like your host has your memory limit too low. Have them up it. This isn't actually pl related." Although I'm really appreciative of his quick response, it raises a concern. Andrew states that the problem "isn't PageLines related." I've installed dozens of free WordPress templates, and never had one crash my site. I installed the free PageLines template, and suddenly my site was screwed up. So, in a way, it is a PageLines issue. The theme isn't robust enough to handle a simple installation. Or, it requires some special memory configuration that apparently no other themes require. If you want to bring in new customers, it's essential to have your free product be functional and stable -- even if it isn't immediately revenue generating for you. Otherwise, it's like giving away one of those promotional pens with your business name, but the pen doesn't work, instead it leaks ink all over people's shirts. I'm guessing your new PageLines 2.0 platform isn't something that's available as a simple one-click install from within my WordPress Dashboard. That being the case, will you still offer basic WordPress themes through the normal process? It seems like the PageLines 2.0 platform is a fairly complex system that runs on top of WordPress (which runs on top of MySQL). Does this introduce even more things that can go wrong? I'd like to try out the basic PageLines basic theme without the entire platform, but probably won't switch to it if there's no long-term support planned. Do you plan to offer more support for the basic PageLines 1.1.1 theme? I'd like to try the PageLines 2.0 themes and platforms on my existing host. I've setup a demo site, but given my experience above, I'm guessing there's lots that could go wrong once I'm trying to set this up with my own host. You might consider offering a lower priced or free version for people to try since there are other themes out there costing $50 and under. Sorry for the rambling. I hope you can answer some of my questions. Greg ResourcesForLife.com

[Rob]

Greg, Actually, Andrew is correct. PageLines 1.1.1 and even 2.x don't use a sufficient amount of memory to crash sites. What happens is that multiple processes are running concurrently and exhausting a hosts low RAM allowance. Your host may be limiting you to 32Mb of RAM for PHP. If at any given moment (irrespective of PageLines), you had many things happening at one time, 32Mb can be used up easily. I had the same problem and as soon as my host upped the RAM to 256Mb for PHP things worked great. Actually, I received the same error message you did and it happened on sites I have that don't use PageLines at all. From my time here as a moderator (2nd longest serving) I can honestly say that any clients who've experienced the memory issue have resolved it with help from their host in changing the allocation of memory resources. Most found their settings too low for current WordPress standards. Let's remember too, WordPress itself is getting far more robust. I'm not sure of any planned increase in support for our free version but we do offer a free 30 day demo at http://demo.pagelines.com with the latest PageLines Framework. While I understand your view about competitive themes, there's many critical differences between them and PageLines, not the least of which is this support forum manned 7 days a week by a team of professional moderators. Most inexpensive themes leave support to relatively un-moderated or undermoderated forums. We also provide a whole range of benefits well beyond the drag & drop simplicity of our Framework. Andrew's prompt reply is indicative of the commitment PageLines makes to its clients, as I'm sure you'll concur.

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

Thanks for a thorough and prompt response. Yes, the benefits you mentioned are my motivation for pursuing Pagelines support. The only other comparison I've found over the years has been thethemefoundry.com, but they have nothing like the Pagelines 2.0 platform. I really would like to have a team behind whatever theme I move to. I've felt safe with WordPress Twenty Ten and didn't move to Twenty Eleven for esthetic reasons. Yet, now I'm considering a site upgrade. So, that's why I'm back looking around. I still don't understand, however, this memory issue. I've subsequently, today, tried numerous themes (activated them on my site), and none of them have produced that error. In fact, in my 5+ years of WordPressing, I don't recall ever seeing that error. It wasn't a momentary thing, the site was non-functional for an extended period of time today after activating the PageLines 1.1.1 theme. By the way, the only solution seems to be deleting the Pagelines theme folder, then the site reverts to a default theme and is accessible again. I'd like to try Pagelines on my site, with my host, with the memory they are giving me, but it seems at present it will crash my site. What if my host doesn't allow me to have more server memory? It really shouldn't get this complicated. There are hundreds of other themes I've tried that don't have this problem. Thoughts? Greg

[Henry Perkins]

My first thought is disable all of your plugins, then activate PageLines 1.1.1. In combination with certain plugins, you may have pushed yourself beyond the limits your host has restricted you to. Platform 1.1.1 has an extremely small footprint compared to most themes, and for it to soley cause this issue seems a little suspicious. If after disabling your plugins and you still see memory limit errors, please contact your host.

[Simon_P]

The more plugins installed with WordPress, the more memory PHP will need for each page.
PageLines will use less than 32M on its own, but add 30 plugins and any site will be over 32.
If your host has a fixed limit, and refuse to up that limit, its time to find a new host
Did a quick reverse dns for your domain, there are over 100 other sites on that same IP, and also got this:

It appears that the web server located at 206.188.193.80 may be hosting one or more web sites with explicit content. The web sites in question are highlighted in red below. There is a possibility that all of the web sites on this web server may be blocked by web filtering software. Search engine rankings for these web sites may be affected as well.

So i would strongly recommend moving anyway!

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

Thanks, Simon. Where did you do the reverse dns lookup? If there are explicit content sites on the same IP, then that could end up in my site getting blocked. I'd like to ask my host about that!

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

I still didn't get a comprehensive and satisfactory answer and response to my original post above. Yet, someone has marked this discussion thread as Answered. Can it be set back to unanswered until I get an answer?

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

I figured out how to reject the "Answered" setting (although it wasn't very intuitive).

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

Well... I thought I figured out how to reject the "Answered" setting. When I click on a person's response that's marked Answered/Thanks then the Answered disappears and indicates rejected. Yet, it doesn't "stick" so the message still indicates answered. Seems like something is screwed up with this forum implementation.

[Simon_P]

http://www.yougetsig...-on-web-server/

[money@resourcesforlife.com]

Simon, Thanks for that link. I explored their tools a bit. Very useful.