Title: SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS Sever load issues
Last modified: September 1, 2016

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# SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS Sever load issues

 *  Resolved [MartinCap](https://wordpress.org/support/users/martincap/)
 * (@martincap)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql_calc_found_rows-sever-load-issues/)
 * We have been having severe server load issues, which our hosts say are because
   of the following SQL query.
 *     ```
       | 27914 | thesport_cmsnew | localhost | thesport_repaired | Query | 7 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts |
       | 27916 | thesport_cmsnew | localhost | thesport_repaired | Query | 15 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts |
       | 27920 | thesport_cmsnew | localhost | thesport_repaired | Query | 15 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts |
       | 27922 | thesport_cmsnew | localhost | thesport_repaired | Query | 14 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts |
       ```
   
 * I’m struggling to find out what is causing the issue.
 * Our site has a big database of more than 60,000 posts and we get around 2m users
   a month.
 * We have tried optimizing the database and making sure the server has enough resources,
   but the problem has got so bad now that we cannot publish posts without the load
   going through the roof.
 * We have W3TC installed using Memcached.
 * **Active plugins:**
    -  CloudFlare
       Co-Authors Plus Custom Field Template Facebook Page Promoter 
      Lightbox Premium Select Google Ads in content Google Ads in content Select
      Heartbeat Control Heartbeat Control Infinite Scroll Jetpack by WordPress.com
      Post Editor Buttons Fork Post Snippets RSS Filter VaultPress W3 Total Cache
      WordPress Popular Posts WPShare Counter Yoast SEO Yoast SEO: News YOURLS Link
      Creator Zone Manager (Zoninator)
 * Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Thread Starter [MartinCap](https://wordpress.org/support/users/martincap/)
 * (@martincap)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql_calc_found_rows-sever-load-issues/#post-7641130)
 * Just to follow up on this for anyone who may be reading and facing similar issues,
   we seem to have fixed the problem.
 * The issue (which had been ongoing for some time but for some reason only caused
   problems sporadically) appears to have been caused by the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS
   query causing a server-resource bottleneck.
 * Hundreds of the same SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS query would run and cause a big strain
   on server resources, often rendering WordPress completely unusable. Some times
   it would last a few minutes, other times it would last hours.
 * After going through our custom theme’s code, we realised that all of the post
   pages were using the (inefficient) code below to load recent posts:
 * `<?php $recent = new WP_Query(array('cat' => 11, 'showposts' => 14 )); while(
   $recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>`
 * As we did not require pagination in this instance, we simply changed this to 
   include the **‘no_found_rows’ => true** part (to prevent the pesky SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS
   query altogether) and it seems to have solved our woes.
 * So the same code now looks like this:
 * `<?php $recent = new WP_Query(array('no_found_rows' => true, 'cat' => 11, 'showposts'
   => 14 )); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>`
 * I’m by no means an expert when it comes to this stuff but I hope it will be useful
   to someone if they face similar issues.
 * Here is where we found the fix: [https://thomasgriffin.io/optimize-wordpress-queries/](https://thomasgriffin.io/optimize-wordpress-queries/)

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS Sever load issues’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [database](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database/)
 * [MySQL](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/mysql/)
 * [sql](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sql/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 1 reply
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [MartinCap](https://wordpress.org/support/users/martincap/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql_calc_found_rows-sever-load-issues/#post-7641130)
 * Status: resolved

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