🛠️ Fix Error Establishing a Database Connection in WordPress 💻

Key Takeaways

if you've just seen this error when trying to visit your wordpress site do not worry because in this video we're going to look at a few solutions to how we can solve it and get your site back up and running [Music] hey my name's ryan i'm from wpbeginner and i completely understand how frustrating this error can be none of the solutions in this video may seem a little technical but please do not worry because we're going to go through it step by step and all the resources and links are in the description below now before we get into the solution let's look what causes this issue now this is a pretty common problem when someone tries to move their website from one host to another or install another instance of wordpress and there are three things that can cause this error one you have incorrect database information in your wordpress settings two the database is corrupt or three there is an issue with your database server at this point you're probably asking what is the database and what's that got to do with wordpress well wordpress is a content management system and wordpress uses a database to store your content and website data when a user visits your website wordpress then connects to the database and shows them the content wordpress needs a few things to connect to the database it needs a database name it needs a database username it needs a database password and a database server wordpress stores all this information in a wordpress configuration file or a wp config file now if any of the information in that wp config file is incorrect wordpress can't connect to the database now that brings us nicely to our first method so method one is to check your database information to do that we need to find our wp-config file and check the information in it there are a couple methods we can use to access the file we can either use an ftp client or a file manager through our hosting control panel for this video i'm going to make it nice and easy and use a file manager through my hosting control panel but if you want to use an ftp client there is a link to a fantastic article that'll help you get set up with an ftp client ok when you're ready we'll jump right in once you've logged into your hosting dashboard you need to look for the file manager in bluehost it's under the advanced tab and then we can find the file manager under the file section here click on that that's going to open up a new tab and what we're looking for is the public underscore html folder and then we need to scroll to find the wp config file once you've found the wp config file right click on it and download it to your computer so i've downloaded wp-config file and opened it in the simple text editor to find the information that we need now i've blanked out some of this information for this video but the information we're looking for is right here database settings database name database username and database password now we need to double check these with our hosting control panel so we're going to go back over to the hosting control panel go back to the advanced tab and what we're looking for this time is the mysql databases which is right here under databases now again some of this information is blanked out but essentially you'll be able to find this information if you're looking under your mysql databases so right here we have current databases so we have the database name the database username and if we scroll down from here we can see the current usernames and actions we can change the password so we can change the password and then go back to our wp config file and put the new password in here so just double check all this information is same as what you have in your my sql databases and then upload it to your website method two is to check your database host information most wordpress hosting companies use localhost for your database host but some don't so the best thing to do is to contact your hosting provider and ask for that information method three is to repair our wordpress database if you see a different error message when you try and access the back end and log into your website then you'll need to repair your wordpress database to do this open up your wp config file in your text editor again scroll to the bottom of the page find this line that's all stop editing happy publishing above that just insert this line of code which is available in the description below save that file then come back over into your file manager find the original wp config file delete that and then go to upload select the wp-config file that you've just edited and then visit this link this can also be found in the description just make sure you change your site.com to your actual site url click on repair and optimize database just so you know this may take a while when you can access the site go back and remove the line of code from your wp config file now if you've got this far in the video and all your information seems to be correct but your website's still throwing up an error our fourth method is to check whether our database server is down this can happen if your site experiences heavy traffic and your server can't handle the amount of visitors at that point your website will seem really really slow and it may throw up the error to some users the best course of action is to contact your hosting company and ask if your mysql server is down if you want to check for yourself then follow these steps let's jump right in head back to the hosting dashboard and find the file manager and click on that make sure we're under the public html folder and create a file called testconnection.php make sure that's saved under the public html folder and create a new file scroll down to the file and click on edit that file now you want to paste the following lines of code and before we save this we want to change the username and the password to the username and password for our database click save changes after you've done that try and connect to the script using the following link again just change the url to your website url if the script 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 i really hope this video is able to help you out and get your site back up and running but if the solutions in this video didn't work then the next thing you should do is ask for some help the first thing i would do is reach out to your hosting provider and ask if they can help troubleshoot the issue some really good hosting providers will even solve the problem for you another thing you can do is contact a wordpress developer now we recommend going through codeable as they're professional trusted and they have wordpress developers on there that can help you out for a reasonable price if you want more tips on fixing wordpress errors then check this video out thanks for watching