Well after 3 months of no trouble my sites went down last night after I went to bed, here's a transcript of my support chat:

info: Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
info: Welcome to HostGator Live Chat! You are now chatting with 'Andre'
Andre: Welcome to HostGator Live Chat, how may I assist you?
Me: I am getting this message on my sites," Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible:. and I cannot log into my cpanel
Me: I just checked my email and have recieved this ,"Your site, we-dey.com, has been suspended for resource abuse. This server is using too much CPU time - your site is not suitable for a shared hosting environment, and will have to be moved to a semi-dedicated or fully dedicated server."
Andre: Right
Andre: It means you have reached the max CPU usage
Andre: and it is affecting other sites on the same server
Andre: As such, your site had to be suspended
Me: How can I be using my max CPU usage? I come nowhere near my capacity
Andre: That has nothing to do with the bandwidth or Space limits
Me: Is there anyway to appeal this?
Andre: No because a senior system admin actually suspended
Andre: There are logs proving the over usage
Me: It seems strange that I upgrade my account one day and they suspend it that night, I have nothing that would cause it to use too much CPU
Me: I can't even get into my cpanel to download back-ups
Andre: it is suspended
Andre: so no access
Andre: If you need a backup you have to request it by email to support@hostgator.com
Me: So basically Hostgator is saying they dont want my business?
Andre: Well, we have Terms of Use which you agreed when you signed up. You are asking us to unsuspend the account without modifying it, that is not possible
Andre: We cannot let one set take hundreds of other sites down
Andre: I am not saying we do not want your business but without modifications, the site cannot be hosted on a shared hosting environment
Me: How do I makr modifications if I cant log into my cpanel? I dont understand.
Andre: What is the ticket idM
Andre: ID?
Me: Abuse #***-****
Me: The only thing I could see using CPU would be yesterday I uploaded hundreds of pictures to my 4Gallery and it makes thumnails and they took some time. But why would you include 4Gallery in Fantastico if it uses too much CPU?
Andre: i guess it was it
Andre: What you can do is
Andre: reply to the ticket requesting the removal of that script and the reactivation of the account
Me: How long does that typically take?
Andre: a few hours

As you can see support was no help, so I went to the peer support forum, and found out that if you run php scripts and get over 1000 visitors a day, you use to much CPU with this host. Is there a host that I can put my blogs/photo galleries on that wont panic and **** me down for converting some pictures, or do I have to go semi-dedicated/dedicated? Any help would be appreciated.

Well you can request hostgator to remove that script and activate yr account. Most all the hosts have the cpu usage policy in a shared hosting environment. And if some scripts are using a lot of resources, then they suspend and warn.

Its seems that Hostgator has not warned you before suspending your acount, which is bad. I suggest you to move to a VPS if you require some high server usage scripts to run.

Hi duderawk

There is plenty of webspace out there . I don't own this site so I don't think I'm advertiseing if I share this link

http://www.freehostdirectory.com/ it's got more than just free host you can find good deals there

While i agree that they are right to suspend a site that is using too much resources, I don't think it is right that they stop you logging into your control panel.

If, Like the man said, They have logs proving the CPU usage they should be able to tell you what script was using the resources. Ask them to do that, Then ask them to remove the script.

I doubt you would get suspended just for running php and getting more than 1000 visitors a day.
It's more than likely due to a poorly written script.

I had simillar problem with other hosting company - and reason wasn't no. of visitors but bad script (they told me which one). After I changed it - all works normal.

I tend to agree with st0x. A host is well within its right to shut a site down for intensive CPU usage. I've had it happen exactly once (and yes, it was my fault...I wrote a banner ad rotating script that relied on an excessively complex calculation.) But your host should be able to work with you and show you the logs as far as where the CPU spike occurred.

I'm not sure about the control panel issue. When I had shared hosting, I never bothered with mine much because I simply did not need it the way most people seem to. But they may have a right to do that too (I'm not sure on that, though, so don't quote me or anything.)

Likely, as others have told you, it's a poorly-coded script. It happens, especially when you pick up free scripts that are easily downloadable. 99.9% of free scripts out there are coded by people without any real programming experience, and as such they're people who haven't dealt with traffic spikes/surges and things like that before.

I would try working with your host for now, but look as well. Give them enough opportunity to show you what info they have and see how well they work with you. From what I've heard of HostGator (no dealings personally), they seem pretty straight-up and certainly a lot better than 90% of the hosts out there.

I've never had any problem with them till now. It may be paranoia but I recently raised a stink in their forums about them hijacking my 404 pages with ads. I hope it is just a coincidence.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

From what I've heard of HostGator (no dealings personally), they seem pretty straight-up and certainly a lot better than 90% of the hosts out there.

I have a site hosted at hostgator and they have always been very understanding.
I once got hacked and had a paypal phishing script uploaded to my site. Hostgator sent me a very understanding email explaining that someone had got a phishing page onto my site and that they have removed it. A lot of hosts would have suspended the account straight away and instantly assumed that i had uploaded the page myself.

They have me back up, slow response time. But at least they listened to my case.

You're generally not going to get a quick response time on something like that, especially in a shared hosting environment. You need to remember that their server houses your site and 100(s of?) others. They're going to be **** sure that the site works without sucking resource dry before they let it back on.

Think about it...if you were in their boat, would you rather have one of you angry or 100(s of) other customers angry?

Oh, I agree that I would rather satisfy my majority of customers over just one. Perhaps the I wasn't clear as I should have been.

I have received PM's suggesting I switch to VPS, does anyone know the pros and cons of this?

Switching to a VPS would give you your own guaranteed server resources, which means you wont be sharing them with any other sites. You can have burstable resources such as 1GB RAM. If its not being used then your VPS can use it. This may not always be available.

VPS can give a good idea of what its like to have a dedicated server. VPS allows you to have full root access to the server so you can install what you wish on it.

Overall you have much more control than you would with shared hosting.

A disadvantage may be that you do not want the hastle of upgrading software on your VPS, but thats not a problem if you select a managed package

Can I ask how much cpu you where using? Depending on what type of site you are running it would probablybe a good idea, as wantingawebsite said, to look at getting a vps to host your website rather than looking at shared again. I could personally recommend you Knownhost, if you are looking for one.