{
  "id": 18972022,
  "title": "How to Clean Up an Exploded WordPress Database and Reduce Overhead",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/08/how-to-clean-up-an-exploded-wordpress-database-and-reduce-overhead",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-08T16:24:18.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/bukabyte/how-to-clean-up-an-exploded-wordpress-database-and-reduce-overhead-4nod"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "WordPress database bloat occurs when your website's MySQL or MariaDB database accumulates unnecessary data over time, leading to slow loading times and performance issues. This can be caused by frequent post edits, plugin activity, and user session management. To address this, it's crucial to create a complete backup of your database before making any changes, as this ensures you can quickly restore your site if anything goes wrong. Next, use phpMyAdmin to inspect table sizes and identify large tables such as wp_posts and wp_postmeta, which often contain excessive revisions and metadata. Finally, purge expired transients and orphaned meta records to reclaim space and restore your site's performance.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}