Hi. My index page of zen cart is causing issues due to high server strain. I recently got this note from my hosting provider:
[FONT=Times New Roman]I was forced to suspend the script "public_html/shop/index.php" as it was causing a high load on the server, and due to the nature of the problem, I forced to take immediate action for the health of the server. Unfortunately I do not have any specific recommendations for this script, however, in general, adding some sort of caching mechanism, where the script does not need to generate a new page with every request, helps to lower the over load that a script will cause. Likely the original author or support group of the software that you are using will be able to help you to understand how to add something of this nature. [/FONT]
When I logged into my zen cart I saw this under my stats:
Code:
03/12/2011 2543 - 2778 
03/11/2011 100 - 410 
03/10/2011 29 - 80 
03/09/2011 33 - 142 
03/08/2011 32 - 104
So on the 12th someone or a bot was hitting my site hard. I looked in my other stat counter and found this IP address:
Code:
78.25.30.167
has logged over 3,000 hits on that day (I looks like it's from Ukraine). They are viewing the catalog pages like a bot would do. Any ideas as how to stop this person or bot from raving my server resources? I don't want to block all bots because The Find and Google Shopping sends a good amount of traffic and sales.

As of now my store is shut down until I get this resolved so this is causing issues.

Why would my index page of the zen cart script cause such a strain on my server? Also, how can I disable cache and would this be an issue at all? Any other suggestions?