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How to Optimize Your WordPress Database for Better Performance

Posted By Guest Blogger 24th of August 2011 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

This guest post is by Lior Levin.

Optimizing the databases of your WordPress blog sounds like it might be a difficult task, but it’s a lot easier than it sounds. In most situations it can be done in just one or two clicks—no need for complicated steps or terminology.

You’re probably wondering why you would even want to optimize your database tables. Well, that’s easy: it can drastically speed up the load time of your blog. On top of that, it can help you with SEO and improve your rankings because “Google, along with the majority of other search engines, continues to place a high value on user experience.” We have seen this profound impact at a psd to html company I work for. No matter how old your blog is, there is sure to be some clutter in your MySQL database tables. If you’re not cleaning them on a regular basis, the backup can have a huge effect on your blog and slow it down drastically.

So, we’ll briefly look at five simple ways that you can quickly optimize your WordPress database for better performance.

WP-Optimize

This is a WordPress plugin that helps you clean up your database tables and optimize them within a few clicks. It does all of this without the use of phpMyAdmin (a program used to handle the administration of your MySQL servers). It will show you which tables are already optimized and the ones that need to be optimized.

WP Optimize

WP Optimize

TentBlogger Optimize WordPress Database

With TentBlogger Optimize, you can quickly free up space and optimize your databases for faster loading, with just one click. It will let you know how much space you can free up and you can even view your databases if needed. That’s all there is to it. Additionally, it will also let you know if you ever need a “tune up” with a quick message.

TentBlogger Optimize

TentBlogger Optimize

WP Database Optimizer

This is another plugin similar to WP-Optimize and TentBlogger Optimize, but with the addition of automatic scheduling. You can go in and set WP Database Optimizer to automatically optimize your tables every certain number of days. You’ll be able to see all of your tables and whether or not they have any overhead (in other words, whether or not they need to be optimized).

WordPress Database Optimizer

WordPress Database Optimizer

Via phpMyAdmin

The WordPress Experts has a great tutorial on optimizing your database tables using phpMyAdmin. While the plugins above focus on not using this method, it can be done without having to install any plugins on your blog. You’ll need to sign into phpMyAdmin and check your tables for overhead.

Via WordPress Database Repair

Many users are not aware of this option, but you can repair and optimize your database right from within your blog’s dashboard. This is done by going to /wp-admin/maint/repair.php on your blog and inserting the code shown at that page into your wp-config.php file.

WordPress Database Repair

WordPress Database Repair

Once you do that, you’ll see two options on that page: repair database, repair and optimize database. Simply click the option of your choice and WordPress will do the rest. If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide on this, you can find it on WPveda.

Now that you have five different ways of optimizing your WordPress tables, you’re well on your way to even faster blog. As a reminder, be sure that you always backup your databases before optimizing them. This way if something goes wrong, you can restore your databases back to the way they were before you changed them.

This was a post by Lior Levin who is a marketing advisor to Internet startups and companies. Lior advises to a neon signs store and many other business online.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Load speed is a factor in the overall ranking of a website, but it’s not a major one. Very rarely do I run across a blog that takes so long to load and I’ve found that so long as the page loads in faster than 10 seconds, from a SEO perspective, it has no real ramifications.

    That being said, there are secondary ramifications that might impact you. Bounce rate works by tracking how many people got to your page and then immediately left. If someone got to your page from Google, but it took too long to load and then left immediately by hitting the back button and went on to another listing, that’s bad. Having a page take a long time to load would increase your potential bounce rate which, in turn, could hurt your SEO.

    Enjoyable article. I’ve been noticing more and more talk about optimizing websites for load speed. As user engagement becomes a bigger part in SEO, I anticipate more “consultants” popping up offering to optimize.

  2. Completely agree – optimizing the WP database and taking regular backups is really important. And its best to not learn this the hard way!

    I use WP-DBManager which is another free plugin that can optimize a database, repair it, take backups, restore the database, delete backup database. You can also drop / empty tables and run selected queries from within WP admin! It also supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database. Its a plugin I have found quite useful.

  3. Thanks for the help. Clearing problems associated with Database should be fixed fast. Thanks for providing amazing tools for that.

  4. Great advice, Lior. I’ve never even thought about optimizing my WordPress site… no wonder it’s so slow at times!

  5. Excellent points here, Lior — not often we get into the nitty-gritty database issues we all have going on in the backend. Though speed might be more of a minor signal search engines look to when ranking a page, it’s still a signal … and for good reason; there’s nothing more satisfying than a page that loads with ease.

    I’ve some really good experience with TentBlogger’s work, so I think I’ll give his plugin a whirl.

  6. Every time I read one of these posts, I realize how much I don’t know about blogging. When I check Alexa, it tells me that my load time is 2.79 seconds and that 72% of sites are faster. I’m wondering if this is a real issue with my rankings? But, I’m willing to try anything that can help and will definitely give this plugin a go.

    Thanks for the insight! I always look forward to getting these updates on my FB page.

  7. Load time affects your SEO and if it takes too long people can decide to leave before your site loads. Thanks for the post as the resources you offer are very helpful.

  8. Good tips. I migrated away from word press only because of the speed issue. I might go back now that I know I can make it faster. Thanks.

  9. Thanks for the info, I was looking for this information, and I am glad that I read your post. I have noticed that it takes my site a little longer to load. I also wanted to improve my SEO a little bit, and hopefully this will help. Thanks again for the post, and keep up the good work.

  10. Great tips in optimizing a WordPress database. Thanks for sharing this.

  11. Great tip man, What do you think if i place wp-config setting permanently in my wp-config file. So will it repair my database automatically every time.

  12. Thank you very much for this information. I can’t choose… WP-Optimize or WP Database Optimizer? WP-Optimize seems better than WP Database Optimizer, but it can’t schedule optimization. Hmmm… I’m unsure.

  13. Optimizing Database is necessary as it will indirectly increases the performance of your blog. Thanks for sharing excellent points and useful plugins b

  14. Simple Step but really useful…

  15. You have provided a fun and great way for individuals to start blogging on their own. I’m sure everyone is highly appreciative of what you have done here! :)

    – Jack Leak

  16. I prefer to use the wpveda guide, but need someone’s suggestions before I actually implement it…

  17. Thanks for the info. I was always curious to know why the more popular my website gets the slower it gets. Thanks for the tip I’m waiting on the plugins to install while I’m leaving this comment.

  18. Thank you for a very informative article. Although I have used phpmyadmin to repair databases, it really hasn’t worked for me, some of my sites were consuming massive CPU, even though I was repairing and optimizing the databases. One account was suspended by the Web Host, because of this. WordPress is a great platform. but the plugins can cause severe problems. Even though I had deleted plugins, the CPU maintained its high consumption. Coming across this article, and discovering that there are plugins that actually clean databases, is a great find.
    The high CPU is not related to high traffic, unfortunately, neither is it related to a huge amount of sites with masses of plugins. I am on a shared server, which, no doubt brought the punishment on me. I really haven’t as yet found the problem , however, maybe one of these plugins will do the trick.
    Thanks again.

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