I started using wordpress at www.HappySchoolsBlog.com since October 2007 and since then I have tried several plugins. In last 3 years, I never had courage to cleanup the wordpress database. Today, I decided to delete (drop) tables in wordpress MySQL database that were unused or from deactivated plugins.
- Total Number of Tables Before Cleanup – 54
- Tables After Cleanup – 33
It might be possible to delete (Drop) few more tables, but I haven’t figured out which plugins were using them.
It was easy to identify few tables by looking at the table names and then click on Drop under MySql Admin page. For other tables, I searched in Google with
- Table Name + plugin + wordpress (example – wp_alinks_settings + plugin + wordpress)
After making sure that I’m not deleting core tables, I double checked with core tables list and dropped the remaining tables.
WordPress Database Backup
I was lazy to install any plugins to backup wordpress database. Instead once per month, I used Account backup option from Dreamhost to backup the files and tables. After seeing Thesis theme getting hacked over the weekend, I decided to install WP-DB-Backup plugin. It was easy to install and create the backup. Going forward, I plan to backup the core tables after once in two days.