Uploaded images are saving to the server's temp folder and throwing 500 errors

Question

I've got a wordpress site that is live and am building a craft site to replace it on a subdomain and am having a strange issue that I've never had with any other craft sites I've built. Sometimes when images are uploaded the craft site the upload fails and I get a 500 error which crashes everything on the server including the live wordpress site. This has happened several times and the only way I can fix it is by asking Bluehost support to clear the server's temp folder for me. They have told me that for some reason images are being saved in there and aren't getting cleared which is causing the error. It seemes to be happening randomly, some days it happens every time I try to upload, other days it happens only after a few hours. I've looked through both Craft's error logs and my server error logs and can't make anything out. I've been troubleshooting several causes:

1. Incorrectly defining the image directory?

Initially I was storing images in a public folder and pointing craft to it with "../assets" because index.php is in a subdomain folder. Then I put the assets folder in the subdomain folder and it seemed to be working fine, till it crashed again. So I don't think this would be causing the issue

2. Multiple users on the same account?

I've enlisted a handful of people to help me port over content from the wordpress site to the new craft site and I tend to get these 500 errors when we're all uploading stuff together. However there have been times when we can work for over an hour without any problems.

3. Some conflict with Wordpress or other old files?

I'm not super familiar with PHP, could some server-side configuration be screwing all of this up? I've also got lots of old sites on the server from past developers that I have no idea what they do. I'm planning on wiping them all after this craft site is up.

4. I've configured something wrong in Craft?

Maybe?

Thanks guys

Answer 1

5. Crappy shared web hosting?

That would be my guess. It seems imprudent to be developing a site on the same host as a live site, it has to share the (probably already stretched) resources available on a shared host and there isn't enough juice to run everything.

Solution? Get a $5 VPS, and see how it runs there. In my experience a properly configured $5 VPS will out-perform shared / managed hosting costing 5x the price. Most VPS can be billed by the hour/minute, so if you don't like it just cancel and you'll be charged only a few pennies.

Personally, I would recommend Linode + Serverpilot.

Both services can be cancelled without notice, so there's really no tie-in or big gamble.