Check MySQL or MariaDB health for WordPress

When to use this guide

Use this when WordPress database credentials look correct but the site still cannot connect, intermittently fails, or returns 500 errors during database-heavy requests.

Steps

1. Check service status. Confirm MySQL or MariaDB is running and not restarting repeatedly.
2. Test login from the web server. A successful local login with the WordPress database user proves the credentials and network path are valid.
3. Check connection limits. Look for too many connections, max user connections, or exhausted database worker limits.
4. Review disk and memory pressure. Low disk space, full temp directories, and memory pressure can make the database reject or stall requests.
5. Inspect recent database logs. Search for crashed tables, access denied, aborted connections, deadlocks, or InnoDB recovery messages.
6. Check table health carefully. Use hosting tools or database maintenance commands appropriate for the table engine. Take a backup before repair operations.
7. Reduce load before restarting. Disable abusive jobs, runaway imports, or high-traffic cache misses before repeatedly restarting the database.

Verify

WordPress should load both public pages and admin pages, and database logs should stop showing the error that matched the outage.

Rollback or escalate

If repair or restart operations fail, stop changing the database and escalate with recent database logs, disk usage, process status, and whether direct login succeeds.