WordPress Site: Error establishing a database connection

Our site has an issue following some work by a developer on this site who I am unable to reach. We are receiving an "Error establishing a database connection" message intermittently while trying to access the site. Our host has also temporarily disabled the site as it has been showing extraordinary server usage. We have been advised the following: - ask your developers to review the code. It may be that it requires optimisation. Removing un-needed modules and plugins, reviewing code to ensure that both script execution and database queries are optimised, and employing caching mechanisms to reduce the impact of commonly-executed code will all help to reduce the impact. - if the code is optimised then there is a chance it has been compromised. I would recommend that your developers investigate whether the site has been attacked. Please review your code for any sign of compromise - typically, this will be files and directories that have been modified more recently than the rest of your site, or scripts in locations that should not contain executable code (eg image directories). To renable the site the host has since advised the following: From looking at the access logs, I have done a search of the activity before the hosting account was disabled: grep '05/Aug/2016:1[4-5]' decorumtiles.co.uk-access_log | awk {'print $2'} | cut -d . -f1,2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -50 3829 66.175 1916 54.214 1915 54.252 1914 54.83 1914 52.58 1914 50.18 1914 122.248 1914 106.187 1913 96.126 1913 176.58 1912 54.217 1911 54.232 1910 54.248 1872 50.116 These are a bunch of IP ranges that looked in the hour and a half before we disabled the package, to have been causing such a huge load on the server. Your package was using 44% of the shared server CPU cycles, which are typically shared with another large number of users. Below those ranges: 165 90.205 92 109.145 80 109.147 20 66.249 10 199.30 8 202.46 4 207.46 4 157.55 4 138.201 3 81.96 You can see the number of hits is typically in the single digits. If you add a htaccess file to block those ranges via FTP and then let us know and we should be able to re-enable the hosting for you.