[y2ksw]

Well I don't know. My smallest server gets ten's of thousands hits per hour and still doesn't give up. The MySQL gone away error is usually a record size problem, and the server should time out at most = no reply = white or error page. For me it's a server setting issue. But of course, if you are on a shared environment - as it seems -changing the settings may be done only within certain limits.

I don't know if you solve the problems you have now switching to a "professional" solution of the same host. If I was you I'd look to get the best for my money, which isn't necessarily the cheapest. I would buy a good computer, giving the most attention to the hard disk quality, add some RAM, install an operating system, the latest Apache, MySQL and PHP and would go housing after a home test session. This way, you know what you have and if something doesn't work, you know how to fix it. It has a relatively high cost because of the computer, the OS and preliminary work, but pays off after a year, because the expense of housing is very small.