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It’s possible the behavior you’re seeing is caused by a few different factors, so I’d like to share some common causes we’ve seen:

1. Multiple services using the same environment variable names

If you have multiple similar services (e.g., multiple databases or multiple WordPress instances) and they reuse the same env var keys, it can become unclear which service is actually reading which values. This can lead to situations where a service appears to use a “literal” value or an unexpected username/password.

2. Service not fully started / not healthy yet

Some panels (like Redis connection info) and dependent services (like WordPress connecting to MariaDB) may not behave correctly if the underlying service hasn’t finished booting or is not healthy. In that case, the dashboard may show RUNNING, but the service may still be initializing or failing silently.

3. DB host not pointing to the correct service

For the WordPress → MariaDB connection issue, a very common cause is that the DB host env var is not pointing to the correct internal host/service name. If the host is wrong (or pointing to an old/removed DB service), MariaDB may reject auth or WordPress will fail with “Error establishing a database connection.”

4. Shared Cluster scheduling / node changes

On Shared Cluster, workloads can be rescheduled between nodes. If a node becomes unhealthy or needs to be taken out of rotation, services may be temporarily disrupted and then rescheduled onto a new node. If you hit an issue, it may require the affected node to be removed and the service to wait for rescheduling/available capacity.

To confirm which of these is happening, could you tell me whether you’re still seeing the issue right now, and share the latest MariaDB/WordPress logs and your DB host/user env vars?

Also, since your project is on a Shared Cluster, please note that the free shared clusters are being phased out. According to our changelog, the two existing free clusters (Tencent Cloud Silicon Valley and BytePlus Jakarta) will be converted to paid shared clusters starting March 15 and will require a Developer Plan subscription to use. Their pricing and rules will also be aligned with the other existing shared clusters.

https://zeabur.com/changelogs/phasing-out-shared-cluster

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