Introduction #
LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress is a powerful optimization plugin. It is a collection of multiple features built-in one handly tool, which is easily integrable directly into your WordPress Admin Dashboard.
After installing the plugin, it is essentially important to review and configure its settings with attention to achieving the best possible results.
LiteSpeed Cache performs a complex optimization covering multiple elements of your website. Your website database is no exception. Keeping it neat, clean, and well-optimized will definitely show promising results.
Getting Started #
To begin, you have to log into your WordPress Admin Dashboard. To do that, please add “/wp-admin” to your domain name – for example, “mywordpress.com/wp-admin” where “mywordpress.com” is your actual domain.
Once you are in, please hover over the “LiteSpeed Cache” option on the module bar on the left. When the submenu is expanded, please click on the “Database” option.
Upon doing that, you will be redirected to the Database section.
Configuring Database Settings #
The database management and optimization tools provided by the plugin are incredible, and you should definitely take advantage of them. Here are all the available optimization choices under the “Database Option”.
- Clean all – You may use this icon to perform all the optimizations listed below. According to the official documentation, the only thing that will not occur after clicking this icon is the “Optimize Tables” and “Clean CSS/JS Optimizer” options.
- Post Reversion – Clicking on this icon will remove all old post reversion from your WordPress database. After doing so, you will no longer be able to restore old post versions.
- Auto Drafts – WordPress will automatically create drafts of your posts, just in case something goes wrong. This is implemented for protection, and if you are completely sure that all posts are properly submitted or saved as drafts, then you can go ahead and click this icon to clear the auto drafts.
- Trashed Posts – When a post gets deleted, it will go to the trash initially, and you would need to re-delete it to completely remove its record. Clicking this icon will do that for all the trashed posts.
- Spam Comments – If you have a lot of comments that are marked as spam, they are held within the database. If you do not want them clogging your tables, we recommend using this icon and removing them, as there is really no reason to keep comments which are flagged as spam.
- Trashed Comments – In case you deleted any comments and forgot to remove them – clicking this icon will handle that for you.
- Trackbacks/Pingbacks – “Pinbacks” or “Trackbacks” are caused by other sites that link pages from your blog. These records are kept in the database, and if you do not really care about them, you may delete them by pressing this icon.
- Expired Transients – Transients are data kept within the database by plugins in order for their functionalities or API calls to be accessed quicker. Expired transients are something you will not need, and we advise you to clear them if you notice their number growing.
- All Transients – This is pretty similar to the above one. Basically, if you happen to delete a transient still used by an existing plugin, do not worry, as it will be regenerated when you refresh your page.
- Optimize Tables – Clicking this icon will run a functionality that is typically accessible from either the command line or the phpMyAdmin tool in cPanel. It will optimize your table by re-organizing the physical storage and the table data associated with the index.
- Clean CSS/JS Optimizer – This icon will be very useful if you are using a minification or combination methods for your JS or CSS files. It will clean any unused data related to these methods.
- Database Table Engine Converter – This table will only be populated if you have storage engines in your database, which are not InnoDB. It will let you convert these storage engines from (typically MyISAM) to InnoDB. InnoDB is great when dealing with tables that often receive write operations, as this storage engine does not lock the tables while doing so. MyISAM, on the other hand, will lock the table during write operations, which may cause slow queries or can cause your tables to crash.
- Database Summary – This section is great! What makes it so useful is the fact that it contains information about the autoloaded data in your database. Autoload data is usually loaded on every page and regularly contains data that is no longer necessary. Typically, this data was input there by a plugin you have deleted long ago, or you have disabled and is no longer used. For the best performance possible, we recommend keeping this below 1MB or lower at all times.
DB Optimization Settings #
- Revisions Max Number – This setting allows you to set the number of revisions that your database will keep before it deletes them. If you have a lot of posts, then you can set a limit of about 30-70, otherwise, keep the setting at 0.
- Revisions Max Age – If you are absolutely sure that you will not need any of the revisions, you can set an interval in which they will be automatically deleted. In our opinion, if you want to be on the safe side of things, you should keep this at 0 and manually handle this from the previous tab.
If you want to take advantage of the automated revision cleaning, please enter the desired values and click on one of the “Save Changes” buttons located either at the bottom of the section or on the top right corner of the screen.
There you have it! All the available optimizations under the “Database” tab of the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin. We believe that developing a routine and cleaning up your database on a regular basis will give you great results! Consistency is key.
