How to Optimize WordPress Database To Get Better Performance

Do you want to optimize your WordPress database? WordPress uses databases to store all the contents of your website such as blog posts, pages, comments etc. Furthermore, stores website settings, theme settings, and plugin settings.

If your blog or website is too old, obviously there will be a lot of unnecessary data in it that increase the size of your WordPress database.

In this tutorial, I'm going to share how to optimize WordPress database within a minute. Here is another tutorial How to Delete Orphan table from WordPress Database.

Why Should Optimize WordPress Database

If you update your blog regularly, your database size will grow. As a result large databases greatly affect website performance. In addition, your server takes longer time to get information from database tables.

Apart from this, If you have been running your site for a long time, I'm sure your site will have unnecessary data such as post revisions, spam comments, trash, transient options, orphaned meta data, and more. These data increase your database size.

By deleting these data, you can significantly reduce the size and improve database efficiency. As a result, your web pages load quickly.

How to Optimize WordPress Database

Optimizing the database is not a difficult task. There are several plugins in the WordPress repository, which allow you to optimize your database with 1-click. Here I will tell about three plugins to optimize WordPress database.

Note: Take a complete WordPress backup before moving forward.

#1. Optimize WordPress Database Using WP-Optimize plugin

First, install and activate the WP-Optimize plugin on your site. This a very popular WordPress plugin that cleans your WordPress database.

The plugin removes unnecessary data such as trashed, unapproved, spam comments, pingbacks, trackbacks and expired transient options etc.

Once activated, it will add a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard with WP-Optimize label. Just click on WP-Optimize >> Database. This will take you to the optimization page.

In this page, you will see the following optimization that the plugin can do. Carefully see each option because you are working on a WordPress database. A little mistake can break your site.

You can choose the optimization item according to your needs. Below you will see a warring - Items marked in red perform more intensive database operations. If the optimization process is interrupted, the data may be corrupted.

Once you’re ready, hit on Run on all selected items button. WP-Optimize will start optimizing your WordPress database.

Apart from this, you can perform optimization one by one by clicking on Run optimization.

Plugin does not optimize InnoDB Tables.

#2. Optimize WordPress Database Using WP-Sweep

Another very popular plugin that cleans up your WordPress database. The plugin remove,

• Revisions
• Auto drafts
• Deleted trashed/unapproved/spam comments
• Duplicated post meta
• Duplicated comment meta
• Duplicated user meta
• Duplicated term meta
• Transient options
• Many more

First, install and activate WP-Sweep plugin on your site. Once activated, click on Tool >> Sweep. In the next page scroll down and hit on Sweep All button. Plugin will start optimizing your WordPress database.

You can also get the details of the items that you will be sweeping. for this, click on Detail button.

#3. Optimize WordPress Database Using Advanced Database Cleaner

Advanced Database Cleaner clean up database by deleting orphaned items such as old revisions, old drafts, optimize database and more.

First, install and activate Advanced Database Cleaner plugin on your site. After activating, It will add a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard with WP DB Cleaner. Just click on it.

Now navigate to General clean-up tab, check all item, then select the Clean option from the drop-down menu and hit on the Apply button.

The plugin will start cleanup your database.

Final Thought

Here I told you about the 3 plugin, which helps to optimize your WordPress database. Each plugin works perfect and you can use anyone.

However, we use WP-Optimize plugin on our site. This plugin is developed by the same team behind the popular WordPress backup plugin, UpdraftPlus.

Again want to say, before using the plugin, back up your site. If anything goes wrong, you can easily restore.

Comment below to share your thoughts and experiences about cleaning WordPress database.

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