There are a few people who I provide tech support to who are becoming increasingly vigilant when it comes to potential phishing attacks. They have been told to "never click links in emails" or "ignore popups that want you to install software". But these are only half truths.

It is completely fine for an email, a phone call, or even a random pop-up to drive you to action. Your bank emails to say you need to change your password? A video site throws a pop-up that you need to update Flash to use it?

These are safe to respond to, but you MUST be the one who initiates the actual actions you have been requested to take, and without the assistance of whatever it was that prompted you to do so.

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I host a number of websites for clients, friends, and family. A solid number of those are running WordPress.

I rarely suffer problems with them... except for one site. This site has been going down, and staying down, to the point that I routinely SSH in to forceably restart the locked-up PHP processes.

I've tried to fix it in the past to not avail. Previously I've migrated the site to a new host with an updated OS, tweakes a great many configuration settings all over the system and site, and very recently I've changed the server setup to match that of other high-traffic WordPress sites I host.

But the lockups have been increasing with frequency to the point where, today, the site would not stay up for more than 30 minutes before refusing connections.

Finally fed up, this is my journey to fix it.

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