In the WordPress blog, every activity is persisted in the database. If you update the blog post, comments, plugins, etc. Each activity is stored in the WordPress database.
If you are using any WordPress backup plugin then because of these redundant files stored in the database, your backup process will get slow, and backup size will get an increase.
Some of you might be faced with an issue like your site is slow, not performing well as expected. If you are not cleaning up your database, then you are making a terrible mistake. It means you are still storing the spam comments, revision history, unnecessary files in your database, which will make your blog slower.
When I heard about the WordPress database cleanup process then immediately I searched for database cleanup plugins and came up with WP sweep and WP optimize.
When I have cleaned up my database using the WP sweep plugin, then my blog performance improved significantly. Now I am cleaning up my database once a week.
Here I am going to tell you about how you can clean up the WordPress database by using WP Sweep and WP-Optimize plugin
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WP sweep
Before doing anything with the WP Sweep plugin, I would recommend you to take a backup of your database.
Install and activate the WP sweep plugin. Navigate to Tools >> Sweep to open the WP sweep dashboard.
You will see the different sections to clean up the database. This section is organized according to the data stored in the table. Different category are
- Post sweep
- Comment sweep
- User sweep
- Term sweep
- Option sweep
- Database sweep
All the name section names refer to the cleaning area of the database. To cleanUP, the database clicks on the sweep button in front of each section.
If you won’t see the sweep button, it means no unnecessary files are present in that table.
Note: Before cleaning any tables backup your database(Use updraft plugin)
This plugin offers you the single button to sweep all your database tables or else you can clean one by one. Along with the sweep button, you will see the Details button, and I recommend you to check the details before cleaning any database table.
In the post sweep detail section, you can see the revision history of this post. This history also stores in the database, which will not be useful anymore. Once you click the sweep button, all your history will be deleted.
WP Sweep plugin will clean
- Revisions
- Auto Draft
- Comments (Spammed, Deleted, Unapproved)
- Duplicate Post/Comment/User Meta
- Any unused terms
All are the above category will be cleaned by using the WP sweep plugin.
I would recommend you clean up your WordPress database once a week/month as per your requirement. It might improve your blog performance.
WP Optimize
WP-Optimize has the same functionality, but the method of cleaning the database is different.
Install the WP-Optimize plugin and navigate to the dashboard(click on the WP-optimize). This plugin offers you a single button to clean your database.
Click on the Run optimization button to clean the different section databases. You can clean all the sections at once by clicking the Run all selected optimizations now.
Final Words
Both the plugins have the same intentions and we can give it try. Cleaning the redundant data is always useful for improving the performance of your blog.
I can’t say which plugin is better and suitable for your blog, but I can say that both are great plugins and you can try it once.
Only one plugin is required to clean your database, so don’t install more than one plugin for cleaning the WordPress database.
I hope that this article helped you to understand the Database cleanup process and how to clean the content of the redundant table.
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Amit Kharbade
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Thanks for details comparison between two optimization plugins, will go with WP Sweep. Cheers.
I was hoping for a more detailed comparison. This blog is one-sided toward WP Sweep. Which I know WP Sweep does help. I have found WP-Optimize is great at deleting old database files that are no longer used and reduces database size. i.e., deleted plugin database files.
Hi Lance,
Thank you for reading the article, I will try to update the article with the latest information. The article was written long ago and we haven’t updated it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Thanks,
Amit