Hostgator Problems

[Bowden]

For the past few day or so my websites have been down and this message shows up:

Error establishing a database connection

I've been researching to try and fix this problem and sent in some support tickets. Has anyone else experienced this problem or know of how I can fix it?

I need one of the sites back up ASAP as I keep getting emails from customers making sure I'm still in business lol.

Thanks in advance. Oh and now it will definitely be time to get rid of HG.

 

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[Emanuel]

Is it on a shared hosting account? If yes, then it's possible you have too many simultaneous connections to the database. Shared hosting accounts usually have a limit of around 10 connections at one time. It's a common problem. Ten might seem like a lot but if there's a couple of users on the site, a couple of bots and if you refresh the page several times in a few seconds, you can easily reach that number.

Perhaps it's time to upgrade to a VPS.

 

[Michael Raphael]

Time to upgrade servers. Tomorrow I can call my staff and see what they recommend is best service for you.

 

[BlakeIC]

I was getting this issue last night, it was because i screwed a few things up in a few databases i had running on phpmyadmin
If you haven't changed anything then attempt to restart the server if possible

 

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[Bowden]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Here is a screenshot of my server status.

I have no clue how to access those Disk files lol. Long night ahead of me!

 

[dkt91]

Have you tried to contact their live chat or called them? They are usually excellent and can help you out instantly.

 

[BlakeIC]

have you tried accessing through filezilla?

edit: i mean check those files through filezilla

 

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[Tengen]

Have you tried complaining on twitter?

 

[Bowden]

Have you tried to contact their live chat or called them? They are usually excellent and can help you out instantly.

Sent out support tickets and waited an hour on live chat. Will have to call in the morning.

 

[Bowden]

Have you tried complaining on twitter?

Good idea!

 

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[rcdlopez]

I have a regular shared hosting as well as a reseller account with Hostgator. I often get those error messages from websites that are on the regular shared hosting. I guess its the result of getting what you pay for. Even though the reseller accounts are technically shared hosting as well, I find its a lot better than the standard hosting.

 

[Tengen]

Speak of the devil:



UPDATE - and just got an email reply that the issue has been fixed!

Time between tweet and response - 20 minutes

 

[codo3500]

Generally it's too much load on it, Shared hosting with HG sucks. It's probably not even your fault; you can literally have your site go down because someone else sharing your server made a coding error and it's making too many database requests.

Get a VPS, I pay $50/m, and have very few issues, and I have like 80+ sites running on mine.

 

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[LightHouse]

Um, more then likely the credentials for the database have changed or no longer work. All hosts monitor and tame overloaded DB's so too many connections isn't usually the cause. (edit: Not to mention there is almost no load on this server at all)

Check the DB hostname/user/pass/table in your websites config file, and verify it with the DB, if anything create a new user/pw and add it to that DB with full privileges and see if it clears the problem.

BTW Hostgator has gone to shit after being acquired by EIG (same owners as bluehost, ipage, fatcow, etc) so you might want to look into something better.

If your wealth vehicle is a website, don't put watered down gas in it just to save a few bucks a month, you'll end up on the side of the road. Go with Liquidweb, they have shared server plans now.

 

[Travis.I]

I was getting this issue last night, it was because i screwed a few things up in a few databases i had running on phpmyadmin
If you haven't changed anything then attempt to restart the server if possible

Hey Blake you can't do that when you have a shared hosting account with Host Gator. If you use a VPS, like we do, then it's something you can do. But then again it could be something else.


Shared hosting providers don't give you the ability to really restart a service, because most of it is branched off a dedi or a VPS.

 

[Bowden]

Website went back up lastnight.

Time to make the switch!

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone, much appreciated.

 

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[smarty]

have you tried crying out loud? it helps sometimes

 

[splok]

Change hosts fast. As LightHouse said, both HostGator and DreamHost are owned by EIG now. They buy hosting companies and ruin them. I used to have accounts at both of them, and they eventually turned to shit. They were fine for a while, but it's just a matter of time until your server is oversold and goes to shit too. Upgrading to a VPS won't save you either even though you're supposed to have a fixed amount of resources (my HG was a reseller VPS).

 

[craig1928]

Don't touch shared hosting, it's basically a free for all for resources where one user could be dragging the whole server down with floods of SQL queries, get a VPS at the very least, or if your pages don't rely on PHP or any server side scripting you could host them on a CDN for speed and redundancy, rackspace is good.

 

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[smarty]

Change hosts fast. As LightHouse said, both HostGator and DreamHost are owned by EIG now. They buy hosting companies and ruin them. I used to have accounts at both of them, and they eventually turned to shit. They were fine for a while, but it's just a matter of time until your server is oversold and goes to shit too. Upgrading to a VPS won't save you either even though you're supposed to have a fixed amount of resources (my HG was a reseller VPS).

So what alternative do you recommend then?

 

[splok]

So what alternative do you recommend then?

I don't really want to plug my host because as soon as I do, they'll go downhill, and then I'll feel like an a$$ >< (happened with both Dreamhost and HostGator... had good luck with both of them for a while, but things change). It really depends on your budget and how important it is that your site is rock-solid. I haven't done it yet, but it's probably a good idea to at least have your content mirrored on a couple of fixed-resource VPSs so you have some redundancy. However, another option would be to avoid typical webhosts and use a cloud server provider like AWS, though that's probably more trouble than it's worth if you're not a developer.

 

[Emanuel]

For unmanaged (you have to install everything on your own) VPS' I highly recommend http://www.intovps.com/.

I have 4 VPS' with them and never ever had a problem or any downtime. Very professional.

 

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[integrity]

@LightHouse and @splok already touched on why not to go with Hostgator and all other EIG-owned hosts so I won't elaborate on that.

As to what hosting companies to go with, it depends on your needs.

If you want to stick with a shared host, you may want to look at Site5, StableHost and Arvixe.

For a managed VPS/Dedicated server I'd recommend LiquidWeb, EuroVPS and WiredTree.

 

[Bowden]

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have thousand

@LightHouse and @splok already touched on why not to go with Hostgator and all other EIG-owned hosts so I won't elaborate on that.

As to what hosting companies to go with, it depends on your needs.

If you want to stick with a shared host, you may want to look at Site5, StableHost and Arvixe.

For a managed VPS/Dedicated server I'd recommend LiquidWeb, EuroVPS and WiredTree.

My main site doesn't get more than a few hundred views a month, so I think I'll stick with a shared host after reading all these suggestions. It's actually a very simple WP site so I probably don't need a VPS at the moment.

Thanks again for all the input. Much appreciated.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

The official *web host* recommendation for this forum is Liquid Web. Their support is unmatched. And I wholeheartedly recommend them which is why they are affiliated on the home page. If you want your support tickets answered in 3 minutes, go there. If you want them answered in 3 days, go elsewhere.

 

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[AllenCrawley]

The official *web host* recommendation for this forum is Liquid Web. Their support is unmatched. And I wholeheartedly recommend them which is why they are affiliated on the home page. If you want your support tickets answered in 3 minutes, go there. If you want them answered in 3 days, go elsewhere.

Switched to Liquidweb because of MJ's recommendation. The best support I've ever experienced. They go above and beyond the call duty. I also use Beyond Hosting VPS which also has superior customer service.

 

[Bowden]

Looks like I'll be switching over to Liquid Web once this billing cycle is done. I'll be sure to use the link on the homepage.

Thanks again everyone!