Spring Clean Your Wordpress Database

Aside from writing regular posts, responding to comments and emails, and keeping on top of spam, running a Wordpress blog is an ongoing process. There are sporadic updates for plugins and themes and regular Wordpress updates to the core system files too. Couple that with tweaks and twists and a blogger can generate a lot of detritus on the server, that can not only waste resources but could causes crashes and outages because of database corruption. That’s where Mittineague’s super Clean Options Plugin comes in very handy indeed.

Download Clean Options here, extract and upload to your Plugins directory and activate as usual. Now, backup your Wordpress MySQL database. Then, switch to the Manage tab on the Wordpress admin panel and choose “CleanOptions”. Next, click the “Find Orphaned Options” button and the Plugin will scour your Wordpress installations for fragments and data files from old uninstalled plugins and themes.

The next step is a little tricky as you really will have to figure out to what the listed orphaned options refer. Some will be obvious, such as entries for plugins you uninstalled and definitely no longer use. Others will be items deprecated in the latest version of Wordpress. Take it slowly, select just small numbers of related orphans and click “View Selected Options Information” at the foot of the list. The next page gives you the option to delete or keep those options and provides various warnings on the page before you click okay. If you’ve got this far, you should be able to follow those instructions without any more hand holding.

Now, double check that your blog is working okay before you run the Find Orphaned Options button again and repeat the process with the next small clutch of orphans. All being well, you should find some performance improvement in your Wordpress blog, but more than that, you will have the satisfaction of that after a Spring Clean feeling.