Woodmart setup – were getting server spikes

We are seeing significant CPU spikes on the VPS despite very low traffic. Over the past seven days the site received 136 visits in total – approximately 19 per day. At that volume, CPU load should not be a concern. The pattern suggests each visit is generating a disproportionate amount of server-side processing relative to the traffic itself.

We are currently in the process of configuring W3 Total Cache. Although since I think Light spped would be better. However, we would like your advice on anything within WoodMart’s configuration that may be contributing to the overhead in the meantime, and on how to configure W3TC correctly for a WoodMart environment with B2BKing active.

Our Stack
Server

• Krystal VPS – 4 CPU cores, 18GB RAM

• LiteSpeed web server, Linux

• Two WordPress sites running on this server, 2nd no issues low overheads.

Platform

• WordPress (latest stable)

• WooCommerce (latest stable)

• WoodMart theme (latest stable)

Active Plugins

• B2BKing XL – wholesale/B2B pricing, user group management, tiered pricing, guest catalogue restrictions, registration and approval workflow

• WP All Import Pro – scheduled product feed imports running via system cron

• W3 Total Cache – caching plugin, currently being configured

• Stripe for WooCommerce

PHP / Server Configuration

• PHP-FPM pool in use

• PHP max_input_vars increased to accommodate large product and attribute sets

WooCommerce Setup

• Variable products with colour attribute swatches

• B2BKing no pricing groups

• SKU search active

• AJAX product filtering on shop and archive pages

Given the stack above, are there any known configuration recommendations, settings to review, or potential conflicts you are aware of that could be contributing to higher than expected CPU usage at low traffic volumes?

Specifically, we would welcome guidance on:

• Any WoodMart settings or features that are known to be resource-intensive and worth reviewing in a setup like ours

• Any known interactions between WoodMart and B2BKing that affect performance

• Your recommended W3 Total Cache configuration for a WoodMart site — particularly any page cache exclusions, minification settings, or W3TC features that are known to conflict with WoodMart’s AJAX-driven functionality

• Any cookie or URL exclusion rules that W3TC should be configured with to ensure WoodMart’s dynamic features behave correctly from cache

Hello,

Thanks for the detailed context.

From our experience, sudden CPU spikes at very low visit numbers are most often caused by traffic surges from bots or malware rather than by the theme. When pages are served uncached, each request can require significant computation, which quickly shows up as CPU load even with small traffic. This is not related to WoodMart specifically.

We don’t provide server or stack configuration recommendations, as these are individual to each website and hosting environment. However, two things are vital in situations like this:
– A cache plugin to ensure pages are served from cache for guests as much as possible.
– Cloudflare configured to control access and enable DDoS/bot protection (e.g., rules, rate limiting, challenge pages) to reduce bad traffic before it reaches your server.

If you ensure that guest traffic is properly cached and set up Cloudflare’s protection and access rules, it typically stabilizes CPU usage even during unwanted traffic spikes.

Kind Regards

Thanks for this. I think the spec we have should be enough. But it does reinforce the thinking around dealing with bots.

You are always welcome. Glad the guidance helped and you’re on the right track regarding bot mitigation.

I will close this topic now. If you need anything else, feel free to open a new topic with the details.

[Author]

Posts