“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.
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:
- 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?
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)
- Yoast SEO WordPress plugin
- WP Super Cache plugin
- Jetpack backup review – Premium WordPress backup solution by Automattic
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.
Hi Harsh,
i am also using wp-optimize to clean up database but i haven’t tried any other one yet, Which one you suggest for best performance to optimize wordpress database.
i usually use wp optimizer to clean up my database, but i will try this one and see how it works
Hey I am using WP Optimize – a free plugin. Which one do you sggest me sing? The current one or this one – wp sweep?
@Harsh Agrawal
Decent survey on WordPress Database CleanUP plugin,
I am utilizing WP-DB chief WordPress plugins for my site
A debt of gratitude is in order for advising this plugin. I will utilize
regards
rakhi
I currently use WP-Optimize, would you say this plugin is better than WP-Optimize? I think WP-Optimize might be easier to use for some of us who are not very confident messing about with our databases?
Hi harsh,
Nice review on WordPress Database CleanUP plugin,
I am using WP-DB manager WordPress plugins for my site
Thanks for notifying this plugin. I will use
Thank you Harsh.
Hi HARSH, Your article is so good. I’ve used WordPress. It’s really helpful plugin. Thanks
Hello Harsh,
Wonderful,
It has really helped me to overcome several issues. I have faced these issues in my website many times but I was unable to recover them. After using WP-Sweep plug-in, I cleaned my website’s database and have overcome them. Thanks a lot Harsh and keep it up!
Currently I am using wp-optimize plugin for cleaning database but is there any superb features of wp-sweep over the wp-optimize and this plugins really clean database?
Thanks for this blog post, I never knew of this plugin. For the past 2 years I have been using Smart Cleanup Tools which is a paid plugin (one time payment)
It does everything this plugin does and then some. Web hosts like it when we blog owners clean up the behind the scenes mess. It’s good for our blogs and good for our hosting accounts if we on shared web hosting. lol
Hi Harsh,
This is the backend stuff that I usually ignore….or that I hand off to my developer to deal with 😉
Wonderful screenshares and super review overall. Take care of your blog from the inside out, or from the backend to the front end.
Tweeting to my WP blogger followers!
Ryan
Same counts for me, also using WP Optimize to clean up my database. I will have a look at this one now!
Thank you Harsh.
Cheers,
Yordi
I’m currently using WP Optimize to clean the database.Anyway need to checkout WP Sweep.Hope it would make things easier
wp sweep is nice plugin for clean up unused data, I am using it and i use wp rocket premium plugin for speed up my wordpress site
I had used this plugin and it’s great one among db cleaner plugins. Now I am using Optimize DB.
Hi Harsh,
Yes we need to clean our wordpress database for best performance.
It seems WP Sweep works greatly. Going to check it out.
Thanks a lot for sharing this useful article with us.
Have a nice day!
Hi harsh,
I am using WP-DB manager WordPress plugins for my site. But, my site is very slow and takes more time (which is much higher than my expectations). So, I wanted to ask you, can using WP-Sweep plugin reduce the loading time of my site. As it is also a WordPress plugin and consist of lots of CSS and JS files?
Hi harsh,
you wrote the review of this plugin very well. I have some questions that I would like to ask here.
Q.1 Do the transient cache and the cache that WP total cache plugin create are similar?
Q.2 After plugin removal, does they leave garbage files in our WP database? If yes, how to remove them?
Q.3 I am unable to understand that what are unused terms? Could you please elaborate it?
Waiting for your reply Harsh.
Thanks for notifying this plugin. I will use it after clearing my doubts.
Have a good day….
I used this plugin before but when I install it and try to activate it my website leads to an error like this “PHP Fatal Error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes………” something like that.
I use wp optimize to clean my wordpress data base but wp sweep is worth checking out.