Both website and Google users enjoy a fast website. Website speed is a ranking component for most leading search engines and people expect a website to load fast on both PC and mobile devices. Slow speeds may affect your website conversions, user experience and ranking in Google and so, improving the speed of your site can only help you. 

Faster websites are indicative of well-maintained programming and design. They are indicative of the status of the database behind your CMS – something that’s often overlooked because it’s hidden. 

WordPress stores all of your content in your database, such as: 

• Pages 
• Comments 
• Blog posts 
• Theme settings 
• Plugin settings 
• Portfolio items 
• Form entries 
• Links 
• Website settings 

If you update your site on a regular basis, the longer you’ve your wordpress website, the more data it’ll have and also the bigger the database will probably be. Overly huge databases may affect the way your website performs and take more time to retrieve the information for the users. 

Since WordPress stores each and everything that you want in your database and various things you do not, cleaning up your database frequently is important. By eliminating unnecessary data, you are able to improve the efficiency of your site. 

Backup Your Website 

Just Before you do anything to the database, be sure that you do a backup of your site. If anything goes wrong during cleaning your database, then a complete backup could be restored to correct whatever which might break throughout the procedure. 

Optimize Your Tables Using phpMyAdmin 

It is just a completely free web app and also a common method to deal with your WordPress database. 

It allows you to operate with the MySQL DBMS through a convenient Graphical User Interface (GUI). If your hosting provides access to cPanel (as is the case with companies like SiteGround or Bluehost), you are able to get into your phpMyAdmin tool from your cPanel under Databases. 

From within the phpMyAdmin control panel, search and click the database that corresponds to the WordPress site you wish to clean up. 

You are now able to get all of the data tables from the website that you wish to optimize and also clean up. If you’ve some databases and do not understand that which is the correct one, then access your own wp-config.php by logging into your cPanel and locating your file manager. 

Look in the main folder for the site that you like to clean up. Find the wp-config.php file, right-click on it then select edit.

Look for DB_NAME (Database name) to find out the exact name of the database for the website you’re working on. Once you’ve determined the name of this database, close File Manager and also cPanel. 

Log straight back into phpMyAdmin. Scroll to the bottom of the table list and look for and then simply click on select all. 

You’ll see that it states With selected. Click Optimize table. It will then run a defragmenting app automatically. 

Delete Unused Themes & Plugins 

Themes & Plugins take up a lot of area in the database. Eliminating any you are not using is a simple method to reduce the size of the database. 

To search your installed plugins, log into your WordPress dashboard, then hover over Plugins and just click on Installed Plugins. 

WordPress users frequently test many themes before they select the design to use. Did you eliminate the themes that you are not using? 

To check, go to your WordPress dashboard and then click on Appearance – Themes to see whether there’s more than one. 

Even deactivated themes remain taking up room in your database. This really isn’t the case. You need to ensure to delete it completely. 

Delete Old Outdated Posts 

If there’s one particular thing you are able to be sure of regarding the Internet is that things always change.

Therefore, if you’ve been running a blog for many years, it’s highly possible that a lot of your old articles are no longer accurate or relevant. 

Do not just begin deleting content which is outdated. You need to first do a content audit and ensure you redirect the URLs of the content before you delete it. 

You don’t need to be removing any incoming links you may possibly have. You’ll also want to ensure anyone coming to your website during that link is taken to a related article not just a “404 page not found” message. 

Keep Your Site Updated 

Old versions of WordPress, plugins and themes can wreak havoc on your site and its corresponding database. Issues range from compatibility problems to security holes which can slow down or even break your website. 

A few WordPress web development designers prefer to wait for a quick time when the latest version of WordPress arrives so that every one of the kinks are worked out. Let other people find the bugs so that you do not need to do it. 

Make it a habit to upgrade WordPress, your theme, and also your all plugins soon after a new version is published. 

Use WordPress Plugins 

Just like most WordPress wants, there is a plug-in for that. WP offers lots of database cleaning plugins which help you maintain your website clean and uncluttered. Below are a few of the very popular and very helpful ones. 

When selecting a plugin, you would like to ensure it is compatible with the version of WordPress, is still maintained, and also has been recently updated. 

WordPress-Optimize 

It is among the most effective and powerful plugins to clean your database and also increase your WordPress performance is WordPress-Optimize. It’s easy-to-use and mobile-friendly. 

A few of its features include: 

• Defragmenting the MYSQL tables. 
• Optimizing your DB without having to perform queries manually. 
• Removing unwanted data such as pingbacks, spam comments, and trackbacks.

WordPress Clean Up Optimizer 

If you would like to optimize your WordPress website and clean up unwanted data from the database without having to make use of phpMyAdmin, WordPress Clean Up Optimizer is the plug-in for you. 

A few of the things cleaned up by this plug-in include: 

• Revisions
• Deleted posts
• Comments in pending, spam or trash 
• Auto drafts
• Pingbacks and trackbacks
• Duplicated comment meta
• Unused terms
• Duplicate post meta

Advanced Database Cleaner 

After you delete older web pages or post revisions from your WordPress dashboard, it leaves several unwanted files in your database. These files slow down your website.

Advanced Database Cleaner will find all those files, also known as orphaned things to decrease your database size and improve your website speed. A few of the orphans it deletes are: 

• Comments in the trash, spam, or pending. 
• Old revisions of posts and pages. 
• Orphan post meta. 
• Old auto drafts. 

You are also able to schedule your database automatically to optimize and run. 

Optimize and clean up your WP database contributes towards the total performance and speed of your site.This will lead to some much better user experience and much more traffic from search engines. 

As outlined above, there are a lot of things you can do in order to organize and declutter your database. For less technical WP users, it is simple to use WordPress plugins in custom WordPress development than to work with phpMyAdmin.

Author’s Bio
Name :- Yashraj Singh Shaktawat
Location:- Meridian Xing, Alpharetta, GA
Designation:- Digital Marketer

Yashraj serves as a Digital Marketer in the leading wordpress development Company named Techno Softwares and there he handles all works related to SEO, SMO, PPC, SME, Content Writing and E-mail Marketing Works. He used to publish his articles on Medium.com. His personal blog is http://yashraj.home.blog.

Instagram:- https://www.instagram.com/yashrajss121/
LinkedIn:-  https://in.linkedin.com/in/yashrajsingh7876
Twitter:-     https://twitter.com/yashraj7876