Clean Options WordPress Plugin: Delete Orphan Tables from Database

WordPress is no doubt a memory hogging blogging platform, but by the end, it’s the best blogging platform. There are thousands of plugins which will help you to do anything with your WordPress blog.

One thing which WordPress need on a regular basis is optimization. This could be optimization of your WordPress theme or database. Whenever we install a plugin, it adds tables into the database, and when we disable and uninstall the plugin, it doesn’t mean those tables are deleted.

To uninstall a WordPress plugin completely, you should also delete those options created by the plugin.

Clean options WordPress plugin is one such plugin which helps 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.

February 2019 Update: WordPress Advanced database cleaner seems to be the best plugin at this moment for cleaning the unused & orphan WordPress database tables. It makes detecting the orphan tables & orphan options easier.

Advance WordPress Database cleaner
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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.

Plugin Link

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.

 

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

14 thoughts on “Clean Options WordPress Plugin: Delete Orphan Tables from Database”

  1. Jamal

    I use WP Optimize for cleaning my DB junks.

  2. Umang

    While i am using this plugin i see too many _wp_session_XXXX and _wp_session-expires_XXXX. So, what should i do about all this ? I will delete it or not ?

  3. Iudica

    Find this plugin via this post. After 5 years without update it is still useful! But use it with care, I found a lot of false positive while I was cleaning up my database with it.

  4. babanature

    they have not maintained the plugin for 2yrs now but aside it, it’s a good plugin to use for proper uninstall

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      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…

  5. Roy Scribner

    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.

  6. Namit Gupta

    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. 🙂

  7. Rahul @ MazaKaro

    important pluging , i bet everyone need to use it and get some control with databases !:) thank you for sharing this 🙂

  8. Dinesh @ DailyBlogMoney

    Thanks Harsh.
    I used this plugin several times. It worked great.
    This is best way to remove disabled plugin entries in database.

  9. Nihar

    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.

  10. Mani Viswanathan

    Nice plugin. I use Wp Optimize. Does this plugin offer a similar service or even better optimization of the db tables ??

  11. shashank

    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!

    1. Martin Pfeffer

      Okay… I tried it yesterday on my page. Can highly recommend. 🙂

  12. Bilal Ahmad

    That’s good plugin. I think no one know about this. I will surely share this with my readers.

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