GoDaddy Error: PHP “Lost Connection to MySQL Server During Query” — How To Fix

While on a GoDaddy Shared Hosting plan, I got this error:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query

The site was previously working fine but suddenly stopped working. Below is how I resolved it.

More Details About The Problem

The “real” site was in the format of sample-app.com/clients/novigrad

I had a subdomain in the format of novigrad.sample-app.com to display it.

Everything was working fine.

The site loaded up locally. In my local environment, I was connecting to the remote GoDaddy MySQL database.

Make sure the “Remote MySQL” has the necessary IP address(es) in the cPanel

In the FTP, the file error_log appeared. Viewing it, I could see the problem listed above.

A Possible Cause

Note: this is pure speculation!

I had to delete an image on the FTP. After doing this, that’s when everything broke. I thought there was some sort of caching issue with the GoDaddy subdomain-to-subdirectory.

Other content (ex HTML) loaded up — but the page stopped loading after the MySQL error.

One Solution That Didn’t Work

I created an additional subdomain, pointing to the same subdirectory, i.e. :

novigrad2.sample-app.com also went to the existing subdirectory of sample-app.com/clients/novigrad

That didn’t work.

I went to the “real” URL of sample-app.com/clients/novigrad/endPoint.php which also did not load up. All giving the same error.

I narrowed it down to the GoDaddy “web” server not being able to connect to the “database” server. Again, I was able to connect to the remote database server from my local computer.

How I Fixed It

• I uploaded everything to a new subdirectory on the FTP
• I created a new subdomain and linked it to that new directory
• I confirmed everything was working!
• I deleted the original subdomain
• I recreated the original subdomain pointing to the new directory

My diagnosis was that the remote subdirectory on GoDaddy became corrupt, which happened when I deleted an image. Creating a new subdirectory fixed it!

Not to stuff this post with keywords, but hopefully if you Google for GoDaddy PHP Fatal error: Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query then this will help 😃