Reclaiming size and speed.
WHERE BLOAT ACCUMULATES
Post revisions, one per edit, indefinitely Expired transients, which are rarely cleared Spam and trashed comments Orphaned metadata from deleted content Log tables from plugins Session data Statistics tables
THE COMMON DISCOVERY
A site whose database is mostly not content. Reductions of eighty per cent or more are routine.
FINDING WHAT IS LARGE
phpMyAdmin lists tables with their sizes. Sort by size.
Anything named log, stat, transient or session is worth investigating.
CLEANING SAFELY
Use a maintenance plugin that understands the application, rather than deleting rows directly.
It removes the related metadata as well, which direct deletion misses.
BACK UP FIRST
Always. Cleanup tools occasionally remove more than intended.
LIMITING REVISIONS
In WordPress, define WP_POST_REVISIONS in wp-config.php to cap how many are kept.
Three is usually plenty and prevents indefinite growth.
AFTERWARDS
Optimise the affected tables to reclaim the space.
