The Easiest Way To CleanUP WordPress Database- WP Sweep

“Error connecting database.”

“My WordPress site is too slow.”

“Is my hosting sucks?”

How many times have you faced a similar problem as above or seen WordPress users complaining about such issues? There could be multiple reasons for the above issue & one of them is the database of your WordPress blog.

Clean WordPress Database
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Update: A new plugin name WP Advanced DB cleaner is much better as it does the deep cleaning of the orphan table in your WordPress database.

Even if you haven’t faced the above issues, it’s important for you to clean up your WordPress database on a regular interval. This could be a week or a month depending upon how regular you post or how big your WordPress blog is.

Here at ShoutMeLoud, I do database cleanup once every month. So, you can calculate your best optimum interval according to your blogging frequency. Especially those who add & delete many new WordPress plugins, cleaning up your database will significantly improve your WordPress blog & hosting performance.

In the past, I have talked about WP-Optimize, WP-DB Manager, Clean Options plugin to get all this done, and today I’m sharing another great plugin call WP-Sweep by one of well-known WordPress developer & techie name Lester Chan.

How to use WP-Sweep plugin to clean up WordPress database?

This is one of those plugins which doesn’t require any technical skills & most basic WordPress user can clean & optimize their blog database in few minutes. Unlike other plugins, this plugin comes with single button for cleaning up all or individual options such as:

  • Clean up post revisions
  • Clean up duplicate meta-data
  • One click deletes spam & comments in trash
  • Transient Options
  • Unused terms
  • Auto-drafts

And few more things that usually bloat your database over time & slow down your WordPress blog. If you haven’t cleaned up your blog in a while, take few minutes & let’s get it done as you are reading on how to use this plugin.

  • Search for WP Sweep from your WordPress dashboard & install the plugin. Here is the official page of the plugin.
  • After activating the plugin, click on Tools> Sweep to start cleaning WordPress database.
  • This page is structured in a clever manner to help you delete individual table according to the usage, or you can go to the bottom & click Sweep All, to clean up your database with a single click.

Here is an example of Post sweep section. Clicking on details will show what all values will be deleted when you click on Sweep button:

Cleaning WordPress database
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  •  It’s highly recommended to take a backup of your WordPress database before optimizing/cleaning the database. Follow this quick tutorial to take backup.
  • Click on the sweep in front of options you want to clean up.
  • In the Term sweep section, if you see there is a huge number of Unused terms, Sweep it only when you don’t have any draft posts.

Here are few terms that you might be seeing for the first time & I have explained them below for better understanding.

What’s a transient option?

Transient Options are like a basic cache system used by WordPress. Clearing these options before a backup will help to save space in your backup files.
You should not lose anything by removing the transient options, as that system is build to rebuild the cache of transient options after a specified period of if they do not exist. You can learn more about it here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Transients_API <Source>

What is Duplicated post meta?

Duplicated post meta
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Duplicates in either the Post Meta or User Meta tables.

What is oEmbed Cache?

WordPress uses oEmbed to grab the embed code for various embeddable content such as YouTube and Vimeo videos. Sometimes, though, the embed code that your WordPress installation receives through oEmbed is damaged.

In this case, the only real solution is to clear your oEmbed cache so that WordPress knows to try to fetch new embed code. <Source>

Once you are done sweeping all the options that you want to clean, click on the sweep in “Database sweep,” it will Optimize your WordPress database. This is an important step after you done cleaning a WordPress blog DB.

Overall, WP Sweep is one plugin which you or anyone can use without technical knowledge. It saves you from all tech jargon  & makes the cleaning up WordPress database easy.

Once you have used WP Sweep plugin, it’s time for you to look at some awesome unique plugins below (All the posts come with usage guide)

Do you have a friend of a colleague who is using WordPress for blogging? Share this guide with him & help him clean up his blog database.

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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.

23 thoughts on “The Easiest Way To CleanUP WordPress Database- WP Sweep”

  1. samdani

    Before I am using WP Optimize a free plugin. Now I am utilizing WP-DB chief WordPress plugins for my site. I am really grateful to you for your great contribution.

  2. Mehul Boricha

    Hello Harsh, Currently I am using WP-Optimize plugin. However I see that after deleting some themes and plugins many tables that are not useful remains in the database (wp_options). I have checked most of the plugins but none of them were able to clear that. How can that be done?

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