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This article describes how to clean up your WordPress database using the Advanced Database Cleaner plugin. You may want to do this, for example, to delete unused or orphaned items such as old revisions, spam comments, and pingbacks. Removing unnecessary entries reduces the database size, which can help improve site performance and page load times.

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Installing Advanced Database Cleaner

To install the Advanced Database Cleaner plugin, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to WordPress as the administrator.
  2. On the Dashboard in the left sidebar, click Plugins, and then click Add New:
    WordPress sidebar - Plugins - Add New
  3. On the Add Plugins page, in the Search plugins text box, type Advanced Database Cleaner and then press Enter.
  4. Locate the Advanced Database Cleaner section, and then click Install Now:
    WordPress - Advanced Database Cleaner plugin
  5. When installation is complete, click Activate. You are now ready to configure Advanced Database Cleaner.

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Running Advanced Database Cleaner

To run the Advanced Database Cleaner plugin, follow these steps:
  1. Before you do any cleaning, create a backup of your database in case you need to revert any changes.
    📘 Note For information about how to back up a MySQL database, please see this article.
  2. Log in to WordPress as the administrator.
  3. On the Dashboard in the left sidebar, click WP DB Cleaner:
    WordPress - WP DB Cleaner sidebar icon
  4. On the Advanced DB Cleaner page are several tabs:
  • General clean-up: On this tab you select the specific items that you want to clean.
    ❗️ Warning Be careful which items you clean! If you clean
    Revisions or
    Auto drafts , you may affect someone else’s work in progress. We strongly recommend you only run the cleaner when no one else is logged in to WordPress.
  • Tables: Click this tab to see the tables in the WordPress database. You can optimize and repair tables on this tab.
  • Options: Click this tab to see WordPress settings in the options table.
  • Cron jobs: Click this tab to see the cron jobs for the WordPress installation.
  • Overview & settings: Click this tab to see an overview of your site’s database and unused data.
  1. To clean the database:
  • On the General clean-up tab, in the Bulk actions list box, select Clean.
  • Select the check box next to the item you want to clean. For an initial cleanup we recommend the following items:
    • Spam comments.
    • Trashed comments.
    • All orphaned data options.
  • Click Apply.
  • Click Continue to confirm. Advanced DB Cleaner cleans the specified items.

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More information

For more information about Advanced Database Cleaner, please visit https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-database-cleaner.