Title: WordPress or hosting problem?
Last modified: September 1, 2016

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# WordPress or hosting problem?

 *  [EG99](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eg99/)
 * (@eg99)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/)
 * Hi. Last week I updated everything and my website was fine. Now I’m getting this
   error message when I try to get onto the site:
    **Error establishing a database
   connection.**
 * When I try to get into wp-admin I get the following message:
    **This either means
   that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect
   or we can’t contact the database server at cust-mysql-123-21. This could mean
   your host’s database server is down.**
 * Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
    Are you sure that you
   have typed the correct hostname? Are you sure that the database server is running
 * Website is: [http://www.crowndentalgroup.co.uk](http://www.crowndentalgroup.co.uk)
 * I’ve been in touch with the hosting company and I’m waiting to hear what they
   have to say. I have a couple of other websites with the same hosting company 
   and they are working fine. They are not wp sites though – built from code from
   scratch – which kinda goes against what I’m about to say next.
 * Although I have some experience of computers I’m not really confident when it
   comes to changing things – like disabling plug ins etc. So I’m looking for an
   east solution to this, if it isn’t host related. I only got involved to help 
   husband and his business out and now I seem to be drowning in this. Daft though
   it seems I was happier working in dreamweaver! However I couldn’t get the type
   of site they wanted and I was told wp was easy to use – which has been up till
   now!
 * Thank you

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [Justin Greer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justingreerbbi/)
 * (@justingreerbbi)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-7588068)
 * Hi [@eg99](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eg99/),
 * It sounds like your site may be using up the allocated resources for your hosting
   plan. This would be a hosting issue most likely but there still may be things
   you can do.
 * To clarify, a lot of hosting plans have hundreds of sites running on one server
   and thus making some shared hosting solutions a horrible experience.
 * IMO, there could be a couple things that are causing the issue:
 * – The server itself is under a heavy load and thus effecting all sites that need
   a DB to run.
    – Something on you site is using resources (a plugin or spam)
 * Depending on what the host comes back with, you may have to take things into 
   your own hands. Try installing a cache plugin to limit DB queries as must as 
   possible. If you site is too big, then you may need to upgrade or move you site
   to a more suitable hosting platform that meets your needs.
 *  Thread Starter [EG99](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eg99/)
 * (@eg99)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-7588080)
 * Hi [@justin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justin/) Greer. Thanks for the
   quick response.
 * The site isn’t that big, but perhaps a plugin is up to something! I’ll just have
   to wait till they get in touch with me: I just wanted to be armed in case they
   start asking questions and batting things back to me. Also to try and get things
   running again asap if it isn’t a problem with them.
 * Thanks again
 *  Thread Starter [EG99](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eg99/)
 * (@eg99)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-7588189)
 * Hi [@justin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justin/) Greer.
 * Well funnily enough, having been in touch with the hosting company, they can’t
   find anything wrong and the site is working again!
 * However I decided to look into the size of the website and it would appear that
   there are problems with the web space allocated. I’ve sent a couple of messages
   to them regarding this however they’ve gone very quiet.
 * Thank you again for your help and pointing me in the right direction regarding
   the size of the site (it’s less than 8000 MB). Now off to fight the hosting company,
   before looking for a new one!
 *  [Justin Greer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justingreerbbi/)
 * (@justingreerbbi)
 * [9 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-7588244)
 * I would suggest looking into optimizing your site. This would include cleaning
   the DB of revision (if you can), Optimizing your images, and removing things 
   that are not needed. It is pretty common to run into resource limits on shared
   hosting but fortunately there are things that you can do to lower the chances
   of a limit being hit.
 * Glad we could shed some light on what may be happening.
 *  [supportmonkey](https://wordpress.org/support/users/supportmonkey/)
 * (@supportmonkey)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-8304604)
 * I’ve worked for a couple of hosting companies. Here’s the fix.
 * 1) go to your wp-config file for that site , and find the name of the database
   
   2) go to cpanel and go to mySQL Databases 3) create a new user. When you create
   the user make sure you copy the password as you will need it later. 4) add the
   user to the database , typically I give all permissions 5) go back to the wp-
   config file. Find the password in it, replace the old password with the new password
   and replace the old user with the new user. 6) save the wp-config file 7) check
   your site.
 * If that does not resolve the database issue then there is a chance that there
   could be an issue with the hosting, such as MySQL not running on the server.
 * ~Support Monkey

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘WordPress or hosting problem?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [database connection](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database-connection/)
 * [wp-admin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp-admin/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [supportmonkey](https://wordpress.org/support/users/supportmonkey/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-or-hosting-problem/#post-8304604)
 * Status: not resolved

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