Hey guys and gals.
I have a reseller account at Hostgator and have for years.
I used to run my main forum off there but over the last year things seem to be getting worse and worse with Hostgator.
I started getting sql gone away errors every day.
So moved my forum to a VPS. Same problem.
Moved back to reseller and continued (obviously with shared i guess)
Anyway after many many support tickets i decided to move host.
After much investigating i come to the opinion that the wait_timeout: set way too low. Its currently set at 3600 but can be set as high as 28800.
The host wont set individual settings regarding MySQL in shared environments which i understand but just thought i would ask if anyone else has encountered this issue with them?
And i know i could have changed the wait_timeout on the VPS but at that time i was not sure what the error was created by.

ps once moving host the problem has gone obviously

I had issues with a host I went back to (Knowing all previous sites had worked fine) and it was my vBulletin that was causing the problems.

I'm not sure if your above issue relates specifically to VB but look into your hosts "mod_security" server settings.

The host I was with threw up SQL and page errors on my VB forum because of a few security settings on their server. - They then modified their settings to whitelist my site.

(02-10-2012, 05:43 PM)Sam Wrote: The issues with a host I went back to (Knowing all previous sites had worked fine) and it was my vBulletin that was causing the problems.

I'm not sure if your above issue relates specifically to VB but look into your hosts "mod_security" server settings.

The host I was with threw up SQL and page errors on my VB forum because of a few security settings on their server. - They then modified their settings to whitelist my site.

I spoke to the host many times about this as did i to vbulletin.com.
The concensus was it was the wait_timeout that was causing these problems.
I cant say for sure though as hostgator was unwilling to assist me until i had moved host.
Then i got this reply to my support ticket.

hostgator Wrote:I'm sorry to hear of the frustrations you've encountered, though I'll be happy to look into this further. I actually have been seeing a fair amount of SQL timeout concerns the past 3 or 4 days.

Additionally....

hostgator Wrote:I can say though we'd made changes recently(Jan) lowering a wait_timeout to 20s. That has caused a ton of problems for clients, so it was reverted back to the previous setting of 60s yesterday.

But like i said i had already moved to a new host and the problems had completely gone away.
I waited long enough for support to help but they did not. Only once i left did they really offer assistance.
Either way i win. Better host and much faster for me now.
Average ping times for hostgator was around 250-400ms
Average ping times for new host is around 44ms giveing me much faster load times obviously.
Now to be fair to hostgator doing tracerts it appeared to be the connection from my isp to the server.
Im in Australia and server being in the US.
Now again thats proberbly quite acceptable for some but i had enough.
Moved back to an Aussie host and could not be happier.
I still use Hostgator and always will for static sites or low activity sites.
But not for my baby NO NO