Site gets stuck!

Try contacting your hosts. This appears to be a server issue.

Thanks, Esmi, but they say it isn’t (as of course they would). The error messages seem to indicate something’s wrong. They can be viewed here: https://wordpress.pastebin.com/NFnHu9cb. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Errors such as Server shutdown in progress for query and database error Lost connection to MySQL server during query suggest a serious problem with your hosts’ MySQL server. I suggest you send them a copy of the errors.

That seems weird as it’s a big-name web hosting service. Would they really have such a problem? I’m wondering if there is some php conflict or something.

What makes you think that big name hosting companies don’t have server problems. They’re sometimes the worst in this respect. ??

It’s not a PHP conflict or a coding issue. The MySql server fell flat on its face.

True, thanks. OK, dumb question, what is the MySqul server and what does it do, and how might it go wrong? I’m not getting any good help from my hosting company and would benefit from knowing what questions to ask them.

The MySQL server holds your database (as well as probably hundreds of other databases). Since all of your site’s content is stored in your database, WP constantly communicates with the MySQL server to obtain information such as what posts to display on a given page etc. When a MySQL server keeps failing, the most common causes are:

– sheer old age (the machine that the server is running on needs to be replaced)

– a badly configured server

– an overloaded server.

Great, thanks, that helps a lot. So would my best bet be to contact my provider, give them the error messages, and ask them to explain why their server keeps failing? And what do I do when, inevitably, they say it’s my fault because I probably have some bad code in my templates? How do I prove a negative?