How to Optimize Your WordPress Database Tables

As time goes on, all the database operations performed on your WordPress tables (which are what store your blog posts and other data) will create what’s called “overhead.” To keep your database running smoothly, you can get rid of this overhead by “optimizing” your tables (similar to defragmenting your hard drive).

Here are two ways to do it.

Method 1: WP-DBManager

Download and install the WP-DBManager plugin.

The plugin allows you to, among other things, optimize your tables from within your WordPress admin (just go to the “Databases” section and click the “Optimize DB” tab), as well as schedule table optimizations on a regular basis.

However, the plugin also lets you delete tables and provides an interface for running MySQL queries, so if you don’t like the idea of all that power being vested in your WordPress admin, you can try the phpMyAdmin method instead.

Method 2: phpMyAdmin

Here are the steps for using the phpMyAdmin software.

1. Go to your web hosting account’s cPanel and click the “phpMyAdmin” icon. If you don’t see one, look for a “MySQL Databases” icon, click it, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the “phpMyAdmin” link.

2. Select your WordPress database.

3. Look in the “Overhead” column. If you see a table with overhead, click the overhead value.

4. Click the “Optimize Table” link.

5. Once it’s done, click the Back button twice (to go back to the tables list), and repeat from step 3.

And that’s it!