This time last year I wrote a post on a doing a new years blog tidy up, you can read it here https://wpdude.com/year-blog-tidy/.

I think the post still stands and I want to update it by telling you about a new plugin I have been alerted to.

Plugins Garbage Collector

The plugin I have found is called Plugins Garbage Collector, it can be downloaded from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugins-garbage-collector/

It’s an incredibly useful plugin that helps to find redundant tables in your database which can then be tidied up.

What It Does

This clever little plugin references your installed and active plugins looking for table references, it then matches known and used tables up.  The remaining tables are marked as suspect and a list of tables you can delete are offered.

Running The Clean Up

A new menu option is added to tools-> Plugins Garbage Collector, click on scan and a list of suspect tables is presented.

Select the tables you want to remove and click on the delete button at the bottom of the page.

Backup Backup Backup

It does without saying (hopefully!)  that you should backup your database before running a plugin which will delete data from your site’s database tables.

For example the tables used by my theme headway have been flagged up, if I deleted them my site’s look and feel would be corrupted.

Follow the wise words of Spiderman “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Wrap Up

If you need help identifying if your tables are valid or not give me a shout. Hat tip to Michael Martine at Remarkablogger who brought this to my attention.

Image by paulk/