If you have been surfing the web for a while, you have at least seen this error a few times. Error Establishing a Database Connection is one of those curses that could be caused by many reasons. As a WordPress beginner, this could be awfully frustrating specially when it happened on its own without you changing anything. We ran into this issue yesterday on our own site. It took a little over 20 minutes to detect and fix the problem. While doing the research to find possible causes, we realized that there was no good article that covered everything. In this article, we will show you how to fix the error establishing a database connection in WordPress by compiling a list of solutions all in one place.
Note: Before you make any database changes, make sure you have sufficient backups.
Why do you get this error?
Well in short, you are getting this error because WordPress is unable to establish a database connection. Now the reason why WordPress is unable to establish a database connection can vary. It could be that your database login credentials are wrong or have been changed. It could be that your database server is unresponsive. It could be that your database has been corrupted. In our experience, majority of the times this error happens because of some sort of server error however there could be other factors as well. Lets take a look at how to go about troubleshooting this problem.
Does the problem occur for /wp-admin/ as well?
First thing you should do is to make sure that you are getting the same error on both the front-end of the site, and the back-end of the site (wp-admin). If the error message is the same on both pages “Error establishing a database connection”, then proceed onto the next step. If you are getting a different error on the wp-admin for instance something like “One or more database tables are unavailable. The database may need to be repaired”, then you need to repair your database.
You can do this by adding the following line in your wp-config.php file:
define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);
Once you have done that, you can see the settings by visiting this page: http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php
Remember, the user does not need to be logged in to access this functionality when this define is set. This is because its main intent is to repair a corrupted database, Users can often not login when the database is corrupt. So once you are done repairing and optimizing your database, make sure to remove this from your wp-config.php.
If this repair did not fix the problem, or you are having trouble running the repair then continue reading this article as you might find another solution to work.
Checking the WP-Config file
WP-Config.php is probably the single most important file in your entire WordPress installation. This is where you specify the details for WordPress to connect your database. If you changed your root password, or the database user password, then you will need to change this file as well. First thing you should always check is if everything in your wp-config.php file is the same.
define('DB_NAME', 'database-name');
define('DB_USER', 'database-username');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'database-password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
Remember your DB_Host value might not always be localhost. Depending on the host, it will be different. For popular hosts like HostGator, BlueHost, Site5, it is localhost. You can find other host values here.
Some folks suggested that they fixed their problem by replacing localhost with the IP. It is common to see this sort of issue when running WordPress on a local server environment. For example on MAMP, the DB_Host value when changed to the IP may seem to work.
define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1:8889');
IP’s will vary for online web hosting services.
If everything in this file is correct (make sure you check for typos), then it is fair to say that there is something wrong on the server end.
Check your Web Host (MySQL Server)
Often you will notice this Error establishing database connection when your site gets swarmed with a lot of traffic. Basically, your host server just cannot handle the load (specially when you are on shared hosting). Your site will get really slow and for some users even output the error. So the best thing you should do is get on the phone or livechat with your hosting provider and ask them if your MySQL server is responsive.
For those users who want to test if MySQL server is running yourself, you can do a few things. Test other sites on the same server to see if they are having the issue. If they are also getting the same error, then most definitely there is something wrong with your MySQL server. If you do not have any other site on this same hosting account simply go to your cPanel and try to access phpMyAdmin and connect the database. If you can connect, then we need to verify if your database user has sufficient permission. Create a new file called testconnection.php and paste the following code in it:
<?php
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', 'password');
if (!$link) {
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo 'Connected successfully';
mysql_close($link);
?>
Make sure to replace the username and password. If the connected successfully, then it means that your user has sufficient permission, and there is something else that is wrong. Go back to your wp-config file to make sure that everything there is correct (re-scan for typos).
If you cannot connect to the database by going to phpMyAdmin, then you know it is something with your server. It does not necessarily means that your MySQL server is down. It could mean that your user does not have sufficient permission.
In our case, our MySQL server was running. All other sites on the servers were working fine except for WPBeginner. When we tried going to our phpMyAdmin, we ended up getting the error:
#1045 – Access denied for user ‘foo’@'%’ (using password: YES)
We got on the phone with HostGator and their support quickly found the problem. Somehow our user’s permissions were reset. Not sure how that happened, but apparently that was the reason. They went back in and restore the permissions and we were able to get the site back live.
So if you get the access denied error in either connecting to your phpMyAdmin or through testconnection.php results, then you should contact your host right away to get them to fix it.
Solutions that Worked for Others
It is important to note, that these may not work for you. Use at your own risk and make sure that you have sufficient backups if anything goes wrong.
Deepak Mittal said that his client was getting the error that database needs to be repaired. Even after repairing the database, the error did not go away. He tried various things and at the end, the issue was the site url. Apparently that was changed which caused the error to persist. He ran the SQL query by going to phpMyAdmin:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value='YOUR_SITE_URL' WHERE option_name='siteurl'
Make sure to replace YOUR_SITE_URL with the actual url example: http://www.wpbeginner.com. The wp_options will be different if you have changed the default WordPress database prefix.
This seemed to fix the issue for him and few others that commented on his post as well.
Sachinum suggested that he was able to connect the database with testconnection.php, so he changed the wp-config.php user to the root user. WordPress started to work perfectly fine. Then he reverted the settings back to the database-user, and it continued to work. He could not figure out what was wrong, but concluded that it was a typo.
Cutewonders suggested that they removed the content of active_plugins in wp_options table and edited the contents of recently_edited. Basically that seemed to fix the problem. Please their full response here.
We read on numerous sources that users simply uploaded a fresh copy of WordPress and it fixed the error.
This is a really frustrating error. What have you tried that seemed to work for you? We would be happy to expand on this resource, so others do not have to waste as much time finding a solution.
Sometimes when I click on the “Publish” button to post a new article on my WordPress blog, then this error message appears:
“”Error establishing a database connection… 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 localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down…..”"
Despite the error message appears, my post got published and there is no problem with visiting my site. This error does not come after each post publication. Sometimes it occurs. (My hosting reseller provider changed my server some days ago and this problem began after coming to the new server) What is the problem and how to solve it, please tell …… Thanks.
It sounds like that you are having a memory issue on the new server.
The wp-config.php fix worked for me!! Thanks so much!
I found a github repo which restarts the mysql server of wordpress if there is a database error using node.js http://goo.gl/gnXLR
The quick snippet of PHP you provided was everything I needed to track down my issue.Thanks for the post!
I am very excited to find this solution. I got the exact problem with my website and after searching it, I found this amazing article.
Thank you so much!
i was using Xampp on local machine to host my wordpress site and got error “Error Establishing the Database Connection”. first time i got that .. not sure why. i noticed in Xampp setup that the user and their privileges was deleted somehow. so i made a new user, using same user name as in ws-config, using host “localhost” and password same as in ws-config. worked like a charm
You’re a lifesaver. Many thanks!
I got error but after couple minutes everything got back normal, any way to avoid getting this error in future?
really great post !
helped me revive my wp-blog
thanks !
THANK YOU AUTHOR!!! Your little TestConnection script has saved me some serious non-paid time.
MUAH! / HUG / HIGH FIVE
Really, this post has been a last-minute rescue. Many thanks to the editor.
Cheers el hombre
Great article by the way.
My issue is somehow strange to me. In the last couple of days maybe weeks, every morning few of my sites on my server will get the Error establishing connection prompt. But after a few minutes, it starts to work without me doing anything. For example, I will get an email from a client that the Error is showing, but when I quickly check it on my end, it works fine, and The client will also notice it back up. So my problem is strange, I’m not sure what to check if everything seem to resolve itself. Is possible because of high traffic?
Your issue is happening due to server overload. While this can mean high traffic, but it doesn’t always mean that. Sometimes, you have medium traffic but a bad plugin that is doing it. Other times, it is just high traffic.
Thanks for the response.
This has never happened before. Just today, I’ve had to restart MySQL several times to keep many of my sites running, while I try to figure why it keeps losing connection. I’m really baffled by this. I’ve looked into the php.ini looking for where to increase any sort of limits, but I come up with nothing. It’s running right now, but soon it will fail to connect until I restart MySQL.
Any ideas on how to adjust to the high traffic and keep the MySQL server running?
One thing you can do is increase your PHP memory limit. If you are running at 32MB, then that could be a reason. But you will get to a point when your current servers just can’t handle it. You would have to upgrade. Not sure what your server specs are, and how much load you are putting on it.
Run your server logs and see which processes are causing the load. Then see if those can be eliminated or optimized.
I have seen that too myself.
This is happening to me, not only with wordpress but also with joomla and piwik and everything that i use to work with and needs a database.
My provider seems to have a different machine for the MySQL service and every now and then the connection between my sites and the MySQL server drops and give me failure.
You should check that this is your case too… and if so… get another host service
Thanks for your input. I think I have narrowed it down to a db instance that was causing my MySQL to lose connection. It’s an instance running a ELGG system. Soon as I discovered how much load this instance was putting on the server, I deleted it. Since then, the Error has seem to have stopped. Who knew…
for me it was the sql password, which had a symbol ( ] ) at the end.
After giving up on all other “fixes,” I edited the password and presto! All good
a very big thanks from me to you because first i website show 500 internel error i fix it by read wpbeginner article now my site show error establishing a database connection i fix it by read your article….thankssssss
My problem solved from this error just by reinstall/update the wordpress in the dashboard.
Which version of wordpress did you upgrade to? I was previously on 3.5.1 but read that the 3.5 version is bugged, so I downgraded to 3.4.2. It’s more stable now but I still see the error…
This has been a question asked by many of our past clients and is such a pain to explain this. Pretty much, 100% of the time I end up having to go in and fix it myself.
I just do repairing the database via cpanel-mysql database and choosing repair database and turn out working and can open the site again now. Thanks for the clue from your explanation.
my own hosting company couldn’t help me. thank you. the first option worked great.
Just went through this issue – and the problem turned out to be that my mysql database was by default using the old 16 byte hashes for the passwords, rather than the 41 byte hashes that the more recent versions of php scripts that WordPress uses requires.
To see if this is the issue, you can look at your user table in mysql:
select user, host, password from mysql.user;
If the password column for your user is 16 characters rather than 41, that is your issue.
You will need to temporarily set the hashing to 41 digits and then re-encode your password:
set @@session.old_passwords = 0;
set password for ‘wordpress_user’@'localhost’=PASSWORD(‘password’);
Just wanted to say “thank you” – this just saved me a ton of time and trouble.
Thanx man……changing mysql password fix my problem…. RESPECT
Where can I find the password for a mysql database?
This is in your cPanel.
What should I do if it won’t let me log into my cpanel either?
Contact your web hosting provider.
Great tip I was able to login through backend and reload my site with no more error messages. Took five minutes! Thanks.
Thank you, changing password and username worked!
THANKS A LOT!!!!
This really helped me.
After editing the wp-config.php and updating with new credentials, the error was still present. I had also to clear my APC opcode cache!
Hi,
thank you for this article. I got this error twice and each time I tried to login into my cpanel it helped. Nothing else, but log into the cpanel resolved my problem.
It does not make sense, and I have no idea what is going on.
I got the message every time after I have made some changes on the website (the last time I was putting on a new email subscription).
Thanks sharing..
Thats helped me..
Aside from updating wp-config.php, I had to update the domain for the following tables:
wp_blogs
wp_site
wp_options -> option_value (for option_name siteurl, home)
If you use WPMU, you will need to update ALL wp_options tables.
The error would NOT go away until all of this was done.
This happened to our site the other day, we got the dreaded error! We received a large amount of traffic but it was expected. We were using Quick Cache as the plugin and the hosts changed it for Super cache and also told us we had hit MySQL max_user_connections due to the queries on the wp_options table. They told us after installing super cache it’s taken us from 600+ database connections to under 5.
After installing the super cache plugin everything worked great again. Now I am concerned about this happening in future, what can I do to try and prevent this? We will always have a large surge in tarffic and then very quiet moments. How can I be sure the database will be able to cope with such demands?
Thanks
i had “error connecting to database” problem twice in the past two days on a wordpress site on an amazon ec2 micro instance. it occurred after sending out a blast email regarding a fund raising campaign and asking people to check out the site, so i assume it was a load-related failure. anyway, the first time it occurred, i tried to restart the database (service mysqld restart), and it shutdown OK but wouldn’t restart. i then restarted apache (service httpd restart) and then restarted the database, and the database and site came back up.
the problem occurred again today, and the database restart worked without having to restart apache.
Are you using a proper caching solution? This shouldn’t happen unless you are receiving a crazy load of traffic.
The scenario you describe is almost certainly caused by your EC2 instance being out of available memory. When you restart Apache a huge chunk of memory is released; only the minimum resources required to get the server up and running are re-allocated when Apache comes back up, then mysqld has plenty of elbow room to start.
A few good places to start fixing this:
1. Check your php.ini memory limit
2. Check your innodb_buffer_pool_size setting in my.cnf
3. Check your swap space
I’m running an Amazon EC2 instance also & restarting apache & then restarting mysqld worked for me too.
I was moving some webspace from an older to a newer server and tested some things, got stuck with this error. This helped, thanks a lot:
update wp_options set option_value=’http://www.newsitename.de’ where option_name=’siteurl’;
Thanks a lot! I was waiting for support from my host for hours…Sundays…but they took too long. My problem was my database password in wp-config, which was different from the real password. I changed it and everything is fine again.
*bookmarked
recently I also face the same problem on my blog at http://www.hanneng.net after moved to a VPS.
the solution is to modify the wp-config.php
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost:/tmp/mysql.sock’);
Thank you so much! I had messed around in my functions php and lost the ability to open my website. in the process of trying to fix this issue I changed my password for database access and had no idea it was the cause for my error establishing database connection. I’m sure this seems fairly simple to someone who is familiar with this web stuff but for someone like me who is just a dabbler it was very frustrating. website works great now! thank you.
Actually I’ve had a different problem and took me some time to resolve it. My wp after moving from one server to another, editing all files needed (wp-config) started loading on home page nicely. Also the wp-admin section worked like a charm … but still the problem apeared when I started to point on pages and articles … all of theme besides homepage get me the mysql error regarding connection to database….
everything started to work …
So…. looking on the internet I’ve found this article of yours and tried your advices … my problem not getting resolved on any of them.
Somehow … don’t know why… my .htaccess file pointed on another default root document and after editing my .htaccess ….
Thought somebody will need that …
MANY many thanks for posting this. Thought I was going to have to start all over. Being one step above novice is not always sufficient! GAH!
Thanks for this post. The adding that line of php code in the first para did the trick for my sites.
Hi there,
I am getting this error every day “Error establishing a network connection”. The site was working perfectly, then after the first day I got up in the morning and check the site and saw the error for the first time. I logged into the crazy domains control panel and the database was missing. I called support and it took them all day to fix the problem, but then the site was ok again.
The next morning the same problem again. I called support again. After a couple of hours the site was back working again.
The next morning – the same problem again. another hour speaking to support, but they don’t actually tell me what the problem is.
I am so worried about this and jsut want the problem fixed. Do you think it could be anything I have done whilst setting up the website, or just a problem with the host?
It could be a number of things. One of the plugins you are using is exhausting the database server. Another reason could be that your host is overselling the shared hosting plan you maybe on. This would result in database connection error.
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-hosting/ << See this page if you are looking to find a better web host.
I actually read half of the 2nd paragraph and managed to fix my site… excellent – thanks.
Glad you got it fixed
Thank you for writing this article. It helped me when having to reload my WP website from a previous back up.
What happened with me is the php.config’s password didn’t match..downloading config.php and putting in the proper password fixed it!
Hi, I run WordPress multisite and just went through an update. I have a blog that has a static front page and a separate page for blog entries. When I tried to open the blog page, I got the above message, Error Establishing a Database Connection.
Turned out I needed to click the yellow bar that appears when you do a major WordPress update, to Update Network which synchs everything database-wise on all sites in your Multisite install. Blog page is viewable now and everything’s working fine!
My solution was to install DBVisualizer and what it showed me was that while the dbname was right it was in the wrong case. So changing the db name from wp to WP in my wp-config.php resolved this issue. No idea how this worked in the first place since this was up and running.
This was a well written and thorough article. Thank you. Not everything applied to me, but I was able to troubleshoot and identify the problem using some of these suggestions. I’m praising your name today! Thanks.
Hi,
I moved my wp-config.php from the dir below the www root into the www root. That brought the site back up. I would prefer the wp-config.php to be outside the www root, so I’ll have to look into why it wasn’t working in the first place.
Thanks for the help.
Jacob
sql.safe_mode=On in php.ini hosed my multisite install this way. Change it back and the site came up again.
One thing to check on if you are moving from your system to the server and using MySQL is the case of the database name. In my situation the server is in all lowercase while my development is all uppercase. Iit’s a very easy over site.
Good suggestion
I had this error on my site – i called my host who told me that my username was being denied permission to the database.
No idea how this happened as I hadn’t gone near these details. However, they assured me this was a common problem.
Within 1 minute of the phone call ending, my site was back up and running.
Very strange….but glad its working again!
Great article btw! Glad i didnt need to use it in the end but very easy to understand if i had!
Yeah sometimes the cats that work in the servers start having hiccups
Glad that your site is working now.
My wordpress site was working fine. Then I got the “Error Establishing the Database Connection” message. Doing a Google search, there was a lot of information on what to do. This was the most helpful to me. It ended up that my database options table had crashed. I repaired it per this post and my wordpress site it works fine again. Thanks!
try checking for the php version as well, sometimes it is the php version on the server that could cause the issue.