WordPress is no doubt a memory hogging blogging platform but by the end it’s the best blogging platform in terms of SEO and
scalability. There are thousands of plugins which will help you to do anything with your WordPress blog.
One thing which WordPress need in regular basis is optimization. This could be optimization of your WordPress theme or database. When ever we install a plugin, it adds tables into database and when we disable and uninstall plugin, it doesn’t mean those tables are deleted.
To uninstall a WordPress plugin completely, you should also delete those options created by plugin.
Clean options WordPress plugin is one such plugin which help you to find all orphaned options from your database and help you to delete them completely. Though before you read further and install this plugin, I highly recommend you to take a backup of your WordPress database.
How to use Clean Options WordPress plugin?
Now download and install Clean Options WordPress plugin and go to setting by clicking on Tools> CleanOptions.
Now you will see a list of suspected orphaned options. You should not delete all the options. Instead select options manually by looking into the name and if you have uninstalled the plugin, remove it. In case of doubt, you can search for that option name in Google to find which plugin added that option.
On the next page you will see value added to those options table and you can quickly verify if you are no longer using those plugin or still using it. Once you are satisfied with your selection, select Yes, Remove ALL of these options from the wp_options table and click on Submit.
That’s it and now you have removed useless options table from your database. Before you use this plugin, I highly recommend you to take back up of your database and you should be aware of which options you are removing. In case of doubt, give benefit of doubt to that options and don’t remove it.
If you are doubtful about any particular options, feel free to ask and I will try to let you know which plugin or theme added that option.
Also check out 30 recommended WordPress plugin that powers ShoutMeLoud.
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1206 articles.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s good plugin. I think no one know about this. I will surely share this with my readers.
This plugin sounds great. Will it find unused css? Thanks for sharing
This plugin i had used in past:)
its good too bad too equally!
Reason if u are a naive user, then u might end up clearing css modifications too!
As harsh said better have a safe copy of ur database and css then try to run this!
Definitely run it after uninstalling a plugin from ur wordpress blog!
Nice plugin. I use Wp Optimize. Does this plugin offer a similar service or even better optimization of the db tables ??
Great.
Thanks for introducing this plugin to us.
Will try this and find whether are there any orphan tables lying in the database.
Thanks again.
Thanks for recommending this plugin, I always install and remove plug so I will get this to see what is left over at my site.
Thanks Harsh.
I used this plugin several times. It worked great.
This is best way to remove disabled plugin entries in database.
important pluging , i bet everyone need to use it and get some control with databases !:) thank you for sharing this
I wondered upon this earlier, as when I installed some plugins the second time I found all the setting same as when the plugin was removed. Removing unnecessary data from the database will help in reducing the database size. Will surely try this plugin. Thanks for sharing.
though i have some fear to implement it , i need to try it soon
Clean Options is a pretty good plugin, Harsh. I use it on one of my blogs because, like you say, orphaned database entries really build-up, over time. I have also run into a few plugins that changed their database tables when I upgraded them, and did not remove the old table-entries. Clean Options will catch these, too.
Does this work on wordpress multisite?
they have not maintained the plugin for 2yrs now but aside it, it’s a good plugin to use for proper uninstall
I agree….and this might stop many new users to try this plugin… This is a new feature by WordPress which shows warning message for any plugin which has not been updated for 2 years.. Though most of them are safe to use…