handmadebyalissa

Will give all of this a shot! Thank so much Wess!!

Down again this morning. Along with the 500 Internal Server Error I’m also getting this error message:

Error establishing a database connection

This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at mysql.handmadebyalissa.com. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?

If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.

Thanks!

Absolutely. All the plugins I have are:

AdSense Manager
Akismet
All in One Adsense and YPN
Date Exclusion
Disable WordPress Core Update
Disable WordPress Plugin Updates
Extended Comment Options
FeedBurner FeedSmith
FeedBurner Widget
FeedStats
Google Analyticator
Google XML Sitemaps
Highlight Author Comments
WordPress.com Stats
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress Hashcash
WP-DBManager
WP-FLV
WP-Optimize
WP Super Cache

More than happy to get rid of any that you think might cause the problem? Thanks so much for your help!

This same thing is happening to me almost every day now. Unfortunately most of what you are all saying is like a complete foreign language to me (I wish I knew more so that I could figure this out!!) but what I do know is that my site keeps going down and usually optimizing the options table helps. But then it goes down again – sometimes almost immediately. I installed the WP-Optimize plugin (recommended by Dreamhost help) and have been optimizing regularly but my site still is going down. When I contacted Dreamhost about this, they said that the problem is with WordPress – is that the case? Thanks for your help!