HELP! I can't access my forum!

[HombreOriginale]

It has been working great for several months, but now I can't access it: I get this notice:

Connection Problems

Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

WHY is the problem being tied to SMF?...and does anyone know what the answer is?

[Arantor]

Have you changed any settings recently?

If not, check with your host to ensure they haven't changed any settings - more than once we've encountered people who haven't changed anything, but their host changed something which broke SMF.

[HombreOriginale]

....I haven't changed any settings, and for whatever reason, I finally got back on, but just received this email from MY login address with Go Daddy:

'.....There has been a problem with the database!

This is a notice email to let you know that SMF could not connect to the database, contact your host if this continues....'

What does SMF need to connect to to my forum for? I thought it was a self-contained program?

The SMF forum base was loaded by my host server, Go Daddy. I can access the forum through my web building program Adobe GoLive, but I have no clue at this point what whoever it is is talking about.

I don't get it.

Secondly, how can I back up the contents ( posts and IMs ) of the site should I encounter a disaster?

[Arantor]

It cannot be 'self contained' exactly - the SMF software relies on having a database underneath it to hold all the posts, threads, users and so on. For whatever reason, the software has been not able to talk to that database.

SMF will email you in the event of it not being able to make this work - you're the site administrator so it will email you to alert you it encountered a problem.

To back it up, there is a backup system inside the forum administration area, under Maintenance.

[N3RVE]

....I haven't changed any settings, and for whatever reason, I finally got back on, but just received this email from MY login address with Go Daddy:

That's intentional, SMF is designed to dispatch an E-mail to the Forum Email address when it experiences problems establishing a connection with the SQL database Server.

What does SMF need to connect to to my forum for? I thought it was a self-contained program?

SMF is connecting to your forum, your forum is SMF. It's trying to connect to the sql server which was unavailable or couldn't take any other connections at that time.
It seems the main problem was that the database server might have been offline temporarily or was too busy (overloaded, attending to too many requests). This is usual with overselling hosts.

-[n3rve]

[HombreOriginale]

..it appears to be back to normal now...perhaps it was simply overload....

[N3RVE]

Perhaps

-[n3rve]