Hello, mo,

We have updated your theme and core plugin, which should resolve the issue you were experiencing. Additionally, we kindly ask you to increase the Max Execution Time value to 180, as the current setting of 60 is insufficient for the proper saving of settings.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team

Hello, Nicol,

Could you please provide temporary wp-admin and FTP access? We will check what can be done to help you.
To grant WP-Admin access, please proceed to create a new user account with an administrator role through your WordPress Dashboard. Once the account is established, you may securely transmit the username and password to us via the Private Content section designated for this purpose.

For FTP access, we require the following details: FTP host, FTP username, FTP password, FTP port, and FTP encryption type. If you need assistance in creating these credentials, please reach out to your hosting provider who will guide you through the process.

Best Regards,
8Theme’s Team

Hello, menichetti,

Thank you for reaching out to us. We have already resolved the issue – please check and confirm at your convenience.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team

Dear David Zoque,

We have checked your server today and noticed that the CPU usage is currently at 75%. Please find the screenshot attached for your reference.

Thank you once again for your continued collaboration and valuable feedback. We truly appreciate your patience and understanding as we work towards further performance improvements.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Dear David Zoque,

Thank you for your detailed message and for the time you’ve taken to thoroughly test and document the issue. We truly appreciate your efforts and the clarity you’ve provided regarding the CPU usage behavior.

Please rest assured that we have been actively working on your website throughout the day, and our team continues to run tests and investigate the matter further. We fully understand the seriousness of the issue you’ve described, especially the high CPU usage during idle periods, and we agree that this warrants a deeper technical review.

We have already escalated this case to our development team, and they are currently analyzing the XStore Core plugin to identify any potential causes. As soon as we have any updates or findings to share, we will reach out to you immediately.

Thank you again for your patience and cooperation. We are committed to resolving this issue as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Best regards,
8Theme Team

Hello David Zoque,

Thank you for your detailed message and for sharing your concerns with us — we truly appreciate your patience and the time you’ve taken to investigate this issue thoroughly.

First and foremost, we want to assure you that we take your feedback seriously, and we understand how frustrating and exhausting it must be to deal with high CPU usage, especially when it affects your clients’ websites and your business operations.

After reviewing your website and server statistics, we’ve identified that a significant portion of the traffic appears to be generated by aggressive bot crawling. These bots often bypass SEO rules and crawl dynamic URLs extensively, which can lead to excessive server load. You can view the crawling activity and affected pages via the following links:

As you’ll notice, many of the URLs being accessed are dynamically generated shop pages, which can result in an almost unlimited number of crawlable links. This behavior is often exploited by bots, especially those collecting data for AI training or other purposes. (see private content)

That said, we absolutely understand your point. This is why we are not dismissing your concerns, and we are committed to investigating this further.

To move forward constructively, we kindly recommend the following steps:

1. As a test, please temporarily switch from the XStore theme to the default Storefront theme. This will help us determine whether the issue is directly related to the theme or something else in the environment.

2. We also suggest installing a security plugin such as WP Simple Firewall (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-simple-firewall/) or using a service like Cloudflare. These tools can help mitigate bot traffic and reduce server load significantly.

We want to be transparent with you: if we identify that the issue is indeed related to the XStore theme, we will prioritize a fix as soon as possible. Our development team is actively monitoring this case, and we are committed to resolving it.

We truly value your trust in XStore, and we’re sorry to hear that this experience has caused you to reconsider using our theme. We believe in the potential of XStore as much as you do, and we want to work with you to ensure it performs as expected.

Please rest assured that we are not trying to shift blame or avoid responsibility. We are here to help, and we will continue to investigate this issue until we reach a clear and honest resolution.

Thank you again for your patience and for giving us the opportunity to address this properly.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team

Hello, Crashraider,

Thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, the conditions you have specified require additional customization, as such settings are not standard for the filters.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team

Dear khurram virk,

Thank you for the information and for taking the time to share the details with us.

We are aware of the issue and have already taken all possible measures from our side. Specifically, we have implemented noindex tags, which are intended to prevent bots from crawling the site. However, it appears that some bots are ignoring these directives and continue to crawl the pages regardless.

At this point, the most effective solution we see is to apply protection via Cloudflare. This can help mitigate the impact of these unwanted requests. The main concern is the extremely high volume of traffic—around 30,000 to 50,000 requests per day—which can significantly affect server performance and lead to the issues you’re experiencing.

We recommend enabling additional security rules or bot protection features in your Cloudflare settings to help block or limit these repeated requests, especially on critical pages like the Shop.

Please let us know if you need any assistance with configuring these settings.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Dear khurram virk,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We have thoroughly reviewed your website and, while we found that it may not be the most suitable tool for in-depth analytics, we did identify a few interesting points that we would like to share with you:

1. Please take a look at the number of queries made over a 7-day period from a single IP address. We have attached a screenshot for your reference.

2. We noticed that the following file is being loaded an unusually high number of times:
https://askasolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ask-A-Pro.svg
We recommend temporarily disabling the widget where this file is displayed. This will help us determine whether the issue lies with the SVG file itself.

3. Based on our analysis, it appears that approximately 90% of the traffic may be caused by aggressive bot crawling, which seems to have increased significantly since March. This is likely due to AI-based crawlers that are seeking large volumes of data and often ignore nofollow link rules and noindex tags.

We hope this information is helpful, and we’re happy to assist further if needed.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team

Dear khurram virk,

Thank you for your message. Could you please send us the 2FA code once again in the Private Content Area?

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Dear David Zoque,

Thank you very much for providing access and for your prompt response.

We have thoroughly reviewed your website and attached the results in the images for your reference. Upon investigation, we found that your site is currently experiencing a high volume of traffic—approximately 135GB and over 50,000 queries per day. A significant portion of this traffic appears to be generated by crawling bots.

This level of bot activity can heavily impact your server resources and contribute to the high CPU usage you’ve observed. Many of these bots, especially AI-based crawlers, have become increasingly aggressive and often bypass standard crawling rules such as nofollow links and noindex tags.

To mitigate this issue, we strongly recommend integrating Cloudflare with your website. Cloudflare offers robust protection features that can help filter out malicious and unnecessary bot traffic, which should result in a noticeable reduction in server load and improved overall performance.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation, and we’re here to support you further if needed.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Hi Filip,

Thank you for your message and for taking the time to investigate the issue.

To confirm, are you saying that the server slowdown on your website was resolved by disabling the cart widget in the header? If so, please kindly confirm this, as we can currently see that the widget is active and functioning on your site.

Regarding the wishlist issue you mentioned — thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have identified the problem and will address it in the next theme update or patch, which will be released soon.

We appreciate your feedback and cooperation.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Dear WebLxo,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

Regarding your concern, we would like to clarify that from the backend perspective, we have not implemented any changes that could cause the issue you described. In fact, we have introduced several performance improvements in recent updates that are intended to enhance the overall speed and efficiency of the theme.

However, to assist you further and help with testing, we can provide you with an older archive of the theme. This may help you identify whether the issue is related to recent updates or other factors on your website.

Please let us know if you would like us to send the previous version for testing purposes.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Hi WebLxo,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We would like to kindly remind you that this topic has already been discussed with you previously at the following link:
https://www.8theme.com/topic/my-website-cpu-usage-100-after-this-xstore-theme/#post-450472

As mentioned in our earlier communication, your concerns were addressed and resolved during that discussion.

If you have any new or additional issues, please feel free to provide more details, and we will be happy to assist you further.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

Dear Filip,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

In order to investigate the cause of the slow loading on your server—whether it may be due to bot attacks or excessive crawling—we kindly request that you provide us with your cPanel access credentials. This will enable us to conduct a thorough analysis and assist you more effectively.

For your reference, you may find this related discussion helpful: https://www.8theme.com/topic/my-website-cpu-usage-100-after-this-xstore-theme/#post-450472

We appreciate your cooperation and are committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible.

Best regards,
The 8Theme Team