For a WordPress site receiving 8,000 daily hits with occasional spikes to 12,000, memory allocation depends on several critical factors:

// Typical WordPress memory consumption components:
1. PHP processes (wp-admin, plugins): ~64MB per process
2. MySQL queries: ~5-15MB per connection
3. Apache threads: ~8MB per thread
4. OS overhead: ~200MB baseline

A conservative calculation for Apache+MySQL configuration:

# Formula:
(avg_concurrent_users * memory_per_process) + mysql_buffer + overhead

Example calculation for 8K daily visits:
- 30 concurrent users (peak)
- 4 PHP processes @ 64MB = 256MB
- MySQL buffer pool @ 128MB
- OS overhead @ 200MB
-----------------------------
Total: ~584MB minimum

To handle 12K daily hits (approximately 45 concurrent users):

// Recommended VPS specs:
- 2 vCPU cores
- 2GB RAM (with 1.5GB usable after OS)
- SSD storage
- PHP-FPM with process manager:
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 20
pm.start_servers = 4
pm.min_spare_servers = 2
pm.max_spare_servers = 8

Key optimization approaches to reduce memory footprint:

# In wp-config.php:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M');
define('WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');

# MySQL my.cnf optimizations:
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 256M
key_buffer_size = 64M
query_cache_size = 32M
table_open_cache = 400

Implementing caching can dramatically reduce server load:

// Recommended caching stack:
1. Object Cache (Redis/Memcached)
2. OPcache for PHP:
opcache.enable=1
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
3. Nginx reverse proxy (instead of Apache)
4. Cloudflare CDN

For sites expecting consistent growth beyond 12K hits/day, consider scaling horizontally with load-balanced web servers and separate database instances.

When dealing with WordPress on Apache/MySQL stack, memory requirements break down into three core components:

• PHP process memory (wp-admin uses ~40MB, frontend ~25MB per request)
• MySQL query cache (typically 64MB-256MB)
• OS overhead for Apache and system processes

For 8,000 daily visits (~5.5 requests per minute):

// PHP workers calculation
$concurrent_users = ceil(8000 / 1440) * 1.5; // 1440 minutes/day with 50% buffer
$php_memory = $concurrent_users * 30MB; // Avg memory per PHP process

// MySQL estimation
$mysql_memory = 128MB; // For query caching

// System overhead
$system_memory = 256MB; // Apache + OS

For spikes to 12,000 hits (~8.3 RPM), consider:

• Implementing OPcache (saves ~20% PHP memory)
• MySQL tmp_table_size optimization
• PHP-FPM process manager tuning:

; php-fpm.conf adjustments
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 30
pm.start_servers = 8
pm.min_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_spare_servers = 15

Based on production benchmarks:

1. Install WP Rocket or similar caching plugin
2. Configure .htaccess for browser caching:

# BEGIN Expires Headers
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"

Essential Linux commands for capacity monitoring:

# Real-time monitoring
htop
mysqladmin processlist
wp-cli cache stats

# Log analysis
goaccess /var/log/apache2/access.log --log-format=COMBINED