I'm also getting this problem at times.
| Top Process | 78.0 | /usr/bin/php /home/comicart/public_html/index.php |
| Top Process | 60.0 | [php] <defunct> |
| Top Process | 56.0 | [php] <defunct> |
And the note from my server management saying
the traffic and the badly optimized php scripts of comicartcommunity.com (the defunct php processes) are causing high loads in the server which causes critical services to fail. We would suggest having the website developer take a look into the php coding to better optimize it.
I've made many changes/add-ons over the years. I'm sure I need to go back and strip some out.