How To Fix The “Error Establishing a Database Connection” in WordPress

How To Fix The “Error Establishing a Database Connection” in WordPress

“error in establishing a database connection” or “error establishing a database connection” is most likely to be one of the most frequently encountered mistakes WordPress users may experience. It’s closely linked with that “white screen of death (WSOD). This means that your website has stopped communicating with and is not able to access the WordPress databases, and consequently, your entire site goes down.

This error should be rectified promptly since this could directly impact sales or traffic as well as analytics.

Don’t worry; we’ll go over some of the common situations that could cause this error, as well as several easy methods to get your website back functioning in no time.

 

This error could be a part of that White Screen of Death as one of the most terrifying mistakes you can come across. This guide will assist you. CLICK TO TWEETWhat Is The “Error Establishing a Database Connection”?

“Error establishing database connections” or “error establishing a database connection” occurs when a site cannot make connections with the WordPress database, which stops the site from loading. The most commonly cited reasons for this are faulty login credentials and corruption of the database.

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This is the way it works:all the information on your WordPress website, such as post data, page data meta information, settings for plugins as well as login information. are gespeichert in your MySQL database. The only data that isn’t saved there is media data, such as images, and the theme/plugin/core file like index.php, wp-login.php, etc.

If someone visits your site, PHP executes the code on the page, then queries the database for the data and displays the results to the user’s browser.

If this isn’t functioning properly and you’re left with an “error establishing a database connection” message, which is displayed below. The entire page appears blank due to the fact that no data can be pulled in order to display the site because the connection isn’t functioning properly. Not only will this cause a problem for the front end of your website, however, but it can also hinder access to Your WordPress Dashboard.

 

“Error establishing a database connection” message in Chrome.

But, users may not see this error in the front end immediately. It is because your website is likely to be running from the cache until it runs out. For instance, at Kinsta, the majority of WordPress websites will be cached for a period of one hour on default. So, if a website remains running on its cache may seem acceptable to a user.

At Kinsta, our support team can extend the time period of your cache up to, for instance, an hour or one week if you wish. If your site isn’t updated frequently, it can improve the speed of your website’s performance since it does not have to search for new files every time the cache has expired. If you have a situation like that above the front end of the website, in most instances (unless you’ve got scripts or a part of your site breaks the cache) is likely to remain online much longer.

If visitors attempt to access your site when this error occurs, the site will show a 500 HTTP error code within your site’s logs. The same status code will show up with the words “internal server error.” This indicates that something went wrong with the server and that the requested resource could not be delivered. If everything is running smoothly, your website will display a 200 HTTP status code, which means all is well.

Kinsta customers can check the logs of their website on MyKinsta’s dashboard. MyKinsta dashboard:

 

“Error establishing a database connection” 500 error message is displayed on the access.log.

If you’re a Kinsta user, you can also take a look through the breakdown of 500 errors in MyKinsta Analytics to determine if it’s an issue that’s been a regular issue.

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500 error breakdown.

What Causes The “Error Establishing a Database Connection”?

What is the reason this takes place? Here are some common causes below. But don’t worry about it. We’ll go over each one of them in depth so that you know the best way to fix these issues. Most likely, you can fix this issue in less than 15 minutes.

Incorrect Database Login Credentials

Your WordPress site requires a separate login details in order to access its MySQL database.

Corrupted Database

With the many moving parts in the form of themes or plugins, as well as users continually removing and installing their databases, they can be damaged. This could be due to the absence of a corrupted table, or maybe the deletion of some data occurred accidentally.

Corrupt Files in Your WordPress Installation

Sometimes, this can be because of hackers.

Issues With Your Database Server

There are a variety of things that could go not working at the end of the web host’s side that could cause overloading of the database as a result of a surge in traffic or not being responsive to the overload of concurrent connections. This is a common issue for shared hosts since they use the same resources to serve many users who are on the same server.

Spike in Traffic

Based on the web hosting provider you are using, the server may not be able to handle a large number of simultaneous database connections. A surge in traffic could result in temporary problems with your database.

 

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