Help With Website That Goes Unresponsive With Self-Hosted Videos (Server Issues?)

I’ve been dealing with an issue for a few weeks now, and after some deep diagnosis, I think I’m narrowing down the cause. However, I could really use some help from those with more experience, as I’ve built websites before but never encountered something like this. I’m starting to suspect it’s related to my hosting.

Here’s the situation: I’m hosting several WordPress websites that I’ve built for myself. Out of the five sites I currently have up, three feature embedded YouTube videos, and they work perfectly fine. The other two have self-hosted short video clips, and these are the ones causing problems. It seems like the issue only occurs with self-hosted videos, regardless of their duration.

Problem Overview:

  • WordPress Setup: Vanilla WordPress installation.
  • Video Hosting: Self-hosted videos using the built-in video widget.
  • Issue: When a user plays a video and skips ahead, causing the video to buffer, the video often hangs and never resumes. If the user tries to watch another video afterward, it also buffers and doesn’t load. At this point, if the user tries to navigate to another page or refresh the current one, the entire website becomes unresponsive for that user session. Interestingly, the site is still accessible via incognito mode or a different browser, but the original browser session remains locked out for 3-5 minutes.

Key Details:

  • Hosting Plan: Cloud Starter plan with dedicated hardware.
  • Resource Usage: Only 8% of resources are being used.
  • PHP Limits: Set to 3024M, so it should be within acceptable limits.
  • Support: I’ve contacted both Elementor support and my hosting provider, but they claim there are no issues on their end and haven’t provided any helpful solutions.

Request for Help:

I suspect the problem might be hosting-related, but I’m not entirely sure. Has anyone else encountered a similar issue with self-hosted videos? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

If you’d like to see a visual example of the issue, I’ve recorded a video showing what happens. [CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO](#).

Thanks in advance for your help!

If on shared hosting are you hitting I/O limits? Can you host the video somewhere else to narrow this down to being a elementor problem or server issue

When videos are hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, I don’t experience any issues. The problem only occurs with videos that are self-hosted (uploaded directly to WordPress).

This issue sometimes arises when I’m browsing the media library in WordPress, selecting a video to use on a page, or even when I’m deleting videos from the media library that are no longer needed.

My I/O limits haven’t been reached. The resources page shows that I’ve only used a maximum of 6-8% of my resources at any given time. The I/O limit is around 10,000KBPS, and during these issues, I’m only using about 3KBPS, according to live data. Unless I’m interpreting it incorrectly, I don’t see any spikes in usage.

Are you encountering a file size limit?

Have you checked your error logs for any clues?

When you mention “self-hosting,” are you talking about your own servers?

You might find some helpful tips here: How to Increase Max Upload Size in WordPress.

You might think it’s related to file size, but this issue occurs regardless of the video size. I even tested with videos as short as 8 seconds or less, and the problem persists. There are no PHP errors, as I’ve checked the logs, and there’s no indication of resource issues either.

By “self-hosted,” I mean that the videos on my site are stored locally on the WordPress/hosting company server, as opposed to being linked from platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. Thanks!

This information would be useful:

  • WordPress and PHP version
  • Theme Name
  • Whether the issue occurs only on desktop or is specific to Chrome

You can ignore the installed plugins for now.

Thank you for your response.

I’m currently using PHP version 8.1, with the Elementor Hello theme. Initially, I had the Elementor and Elementor Pro plugins installed, but I uninstalled all plugins at one point, yet the issue persisted.

As part of my troubleshooting process, I switched all videos to YouTube embeds, which resolved the issue temporarily. However, I’m not entirely satisfied with this solution because YouTube tends to autoplay videos (like a muted homepage background video) at 360P. I need a method to ensure videos don’t play until they reach 1080P.

To further diagnose the problem without affecting my main site, I created a new throwaway subdomain, dev.cesglobal.com. Both this subdomain and my main site are on the same web hosting plan, and both URLs are staging domains for testing before going live.

The dev.cesglobal.com subdomain is a vanilla WordPress installation with no additional plugins, running the Elementor Hello theme. I used the default WordPress video widget to add the same videos, trying to determine if Elementor was the cause. The issue still occurred, suggesting that the problem lies either with WordPress itself or with my hosting.

Additionally, I noticed that the video controls don’t display unless you right-click each video and select “show all controls.” When you do this, the videos sometimes load perfectly, but other times, they either buffer excessively or cause the page to crash.

I appreciate any further assistance you can provide!

Oh sorry, and hosting service provider name?

I just confirmed that the issue occurs on both Chrome and Microsoft Edge (Internet Explorer), so it’s not browser-related. My next step is to have someone else host the same videos with a different hosting provider to see if the issue persists. This will help determine whether the problem lies with my hosting provider or if it’s related to WordPress itself.