wafdiag2
Short test content for diagnosing a WAF block on the real load-testing article.
Section
Just checking if payload size or code blocks trigger a rule.
Frequently asked questions
Will load testing crash my live site?
It can, if you point the test at production during business hours. Always run load tests against a staging clone of the site, and if you must test production, do it during your lowest-traffic window with your host's support team aware.
How many concurrent users should I test with?
Aim for 2-3x your expected peak, not your average traffic. If you normally see 20 concurrent visitors but expect 100 during a sale, test at 200-300 to see where the ceiling actually is before you get there for real.
Is Apache Bench (ab) enough, or do I need wrk and k6?
ab is fine for a quick sanity check on a single URL. Switch to wrk for higher concurrency and latency percentiles, and to k6 when you need to script a multi-step flow like add-to-cart and checkout.
My VPS has 2GB of RAM. What should pm.max_children be?
Check your actual PHP-FPM process size with ps -ylC php-fpm --sort:rss, then divide the RAM you can dedicate to PHP by that number. A typical WordPress site averaging 50MB per process on 1.5GB of available RAM supports roughly 25-30 children, well above most default settings.
Can Getwebup run the load test for me?
Our support engineers can help you interpret results and tune PHP-FPM, MySQL, or Nginx settings on your VPS, but the test itself should be run from outside the server so you're measuring what a real visitor experiences.