Wordpress Expert to fix possible SQL/Caching/Database issue ASAP! (site is not a blog)

Our client has a large Wordpress site that is not a blog. It has 30 plugins running - some possibly redundant. We are getting intermittent SQL errors when searching on the front end or clicking a link on the left nav bar or main nav tab. You get a long wait and sometimes the new page opens up but sometimes you get the SQL error: SQL failed; SQL:SELWCT id, detail_page FROM wp_pod_types WHERE name = 'categories' LIMIT 1, Response: MySQL server has gone away (when trying to use the search bar) Hosting is at Hostgator. They increased the timeout limits and that has helped some but we really think this is WP issue rather than a hosting issue - although we were having some caching issues that seemed to clear up when we installed WPsupercache. In the attachment I show hostgators suggestions so far. One SQL guy suggested it is the caching plugin and we should unload the database and slowly load it again to see which plugin is producing the bug but he thinks we need a wordpress expert to make that decision. The client is going to use their website to promote a large event soon. I need a WP expert to come in take a complete backup before making any changes then locate the issue and fix ASAP. We need someone who can look at this issue immediately. This is third party work. No contact with our client is allowed. ## Deliverables This is what Hostgator has done or suggested we do so far. These go from latest to earliest Hello, The logs look very clean, nothing showed up in the slow query log, I've also looked at the system-snapshot logs and there was nothing out of the ordinary in there either. Did you get that message again over the weekend? If you did, do you have the time it happened so we can check back around that time. Hello, With it being very intermittent with the issue it is hard for us to track down the exact issue. With the slow logging on though it should assist us greating in finding the issue. This could be also related to the amount of plugins that you do have running on your Wordpress site since you have over 30 active at this time. Which some are duplicates such as WP-States and [login to view URL] Stats. Hello, I've increased the timeouts a little more. I've checked out the server and at this point, I really don't see a reason at this time to upgrade to a higher level or dedicated server. I think we just gotta the SQL problem figured out first so I've also added slow query logging on the server so that we can see any queries that are taking too long to complete. Hello, I've increased some timeouts in your mysql configuration to allow more time for a query to run. Lets see if this helps. Hello, It appears that you had two different caching plugins installed, WP SuperCache and W3 TotalCache. Even though W3 TotalCache was disabled, it sometimes has a tendency to conflict with WP SuperCache, causing performance slowdowns. I have removed W3 TotalCache, and I am seeing that the search functionality on your site is running much more quickly. Greetings, It appears that the query is in a sleep state from the beginning of the query. I have ran the query on the server and the results that are returned are posted below. However, after running the query on the server I was able to load it in the page. After testing this further I am also noticing that after running a repair and optimize on your database, then query is working correctly. It is possible the table is being marked as crashed after being ran a few times. Showing the mysql processes on the server and the amount of time they have been running. I took this at the beginning of the query. +-------+---------------+-----------+----------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------+ | Id | User | Host | db | Command | Time | State | Info | +-------+---------------+-----------+----------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------+ | 34569 | lisaowen_wrdp | localhost | lisaowen_wrdp1 | Sleep | 1 | | | | 34571 | lisaowen_wrdp | localhost | lisaowen_wrdp1 | Sleep | 0 | | | | 34572 | root | localhost | | Query | 0 | | show processlist | +-------+---------------+-----------+----------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------+ Showing that the query will return results even if the error "MySQL server has gone away" shows: mysql> SELECT id, detail_page FROM wp_pod_types WHERE name = mysql> 'categories' LIMIT 1; ERROR 2006 (HY000): MySQL server has gone away No connection. Trying to reconnect... Connection id: 34479 Current database: lisaowen_wrdp1 +----+-------------+ | id | detail_page | +----+-------------+ | 3 | | +----+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.02 sec) Hello, Your traffic may be due to the large number of email failures, please review your spam control to make sure they are correct. You have a large number of cache file in wp-content/cache, you should check and adjust your cache parameters. You have a considerable amount of plugins that affect the memory resource counters. You should check to make sure your plugins are up to date. These articles can help you manage plugins: <[login to view URL]> <[login to view URL]> The logs did not conclusively show what was going on. We have written a custom system snapshotting tool for cases like this that keeps far more detailed logs. The next time this happens please ssh into your server as the root user and execute the following command: pkill [login to view URL] If you are not able to do that, please use the following form to have your server rebooted. Please make sure to require that a reboot be performed in the special instructions field: <[login to view URL]> Once you have captured a snapshot (with the pkill command or by rebooting your server ) please open a ticket with our support team referencing this ticket: and noting that the logs can be found in: /root/system-snapshot/ The script has been added to the root crontab so it will resume running if the server is rebooted. If the server runs successfully for one week, the script will stop running and remove itself from the root crontab."