---
title: "Troubleshooting WordPress high pageload times / memory timeouts"
slug: "troubleshooting-wordpress-high-pageload-times-memory-timeouts"
updated: 2026-04-13T03:41:53Z
published: 2026-04-13T03:41:53Z
canonical: "docs.serversaustralia.com.au/troubleshooting-wordpress-high-pageload-times-memory-timeouts"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.serversaustralia.com.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Troubleshooting WordPress high pageload times / memory timeouts

In some cases, WordPress plugins may encounter an issue that causes them to loop repeatedly, leading to a memory problem on the website, regardless of the assigned PHP memory_limit.

```shell
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 1073741824 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 92 bytes) in /home/username/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php on line 298
```

Notes:

*The procedure requires SSH access to the user account, along with command-line experience.*

Using **"ps"** as the user, you can see the PHP application increasing its RAM usage and running in the background (***this method will only work in a suphp/lsapi environment***).

```shell
#ps auxwwf
username 280337 98.0 5.6 1239224 914400 ? RN 10:54 1:16 | \_ /usr/bin/php /home/username/public_html/wp-admin/index.php
```

To trace the usage of this process, you can then go ahead and use the "**strace**" application to see what is doing it. In the example below, one WordPress plugin can be seen looping over and over, for 10-20 seconds, on the same lines, making it obvious which plugin is causing the high page load time.

```shell
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin/core/um-admin-filters-fields.php", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=5139, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin/core", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin/core/um-admin-columns.php", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=3218, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin/core", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/admin", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
```

In the above example, you can then either decide to disable the broken plugin, or you can troubleshoot it further using the available WordPress debugging.

> [!CAUTION]
> Please note!
> 
> Scripting or Website content related issues are out of Servers Australia’s support scope, so we can only provide very minimal assistance on these and recommend reaching out to a developer or the WordpPess theme/plugin creator.