Title: Database growing really fast
Last modified: August 30, 2016

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# Database growing really fast

 *  Resolved [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * (@drfelip)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/)
 * Hi everybody!
 * In a few days my WP database has grown dramatically fast, from 285 MB up to 486
   MB, so my hosting provider has locked it. Strangest thing is that there was almost
   no activity in the site: no posts, no comments, maybe a few forum posts (i use
   bbPress). The troublesome table seems to be wp_options, as it takes 425 MB. I
   already use the Transient Cleaner, WP-Sweep and WP-Optimizer plugins. Akismet
   has not blocked a lot of spam recently and the backups made by BackWPup are small(
   3 copies of around 34 MB). I didn’t notice any difference in database size when
   disabling plugins. What can I do to find out what’s causing the problem? I don’t
   know much about MySQL 🙁
 * Thanks in advance!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  [Laura – WPMU DEV Support](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wpmudev-support8/)
 * (@wpmudev-support8)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608275)
 * Hello Drfelip, I hope that you are well today!
 * The may happen because WordPress keeps track of all the revisions made during
   the publishing of an article. So your database grows every time one saves a draft.
 * You can try to delete revisions using this plugin:
    [https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clean-up-optimizer/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clean-up-optimizer/)
 * I hope this will help!
 * Cheers,
    Nastia
 *  [Mark Ratledge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/songdogtech/)
 * (@songdogtech)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608279)
 * **[@nastia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nastia/),**
 * Revisions are stored in the wp_posts table, *not* the wp_options table. And if
   [@drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/) hasn’t been posting,
   there is no reason for revisions to accumulate, and he already used a plugin 
   to delete revisions.
 * **[@drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/):**
 * the issue is the options table at425 megs; that’s way huge. What theme are you
   using? Themes write to wp_options.
 * And, many plugins store data there. You will need to deactivate plugins and also
   delete them, and hopefully the bad plugin will also delete its data.
 * Ideally, you are going to need to open and examine wp_options with phpmyadmin
   to see what rows are taking up the most space. Do you have access to phpmyadmin
   at your webhost?
 *  Thread Starter [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * (@drfelip)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608366)
 * [@songdogtech](https://wordpress.org/support/users/songdogtech/),
 * The theme is called Leetpress, I think it has been never updated since I installed
   it: [http://www.soratemplates.com/2012/07/leetpress-blogger-templates.html](http://www.soratemplates.com/2012/07/leetpress-blogger-templates.html)
 * Yes, I have access to phpmyadmin; maybe it’s an old version, as it does not show
   the size of tables, only the number of rows.
 *  [Mark Ratledge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/songdogtech/)
 * (@songdogtech)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608373)
 * Try [https://www.adminer.org/](https://www.adminer.org/) It’s a replacement for
   phmyadmin. You need to find out which tables are the largest, and then `select`
   that table to open it and see what the most of the rows are.
 *  Thread Starter [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * (@drfelip)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608388)
 * [@songdogtech](https://wordpress.org/support/users/songdogtech/)
 * I installed adminer, now I can easily see the size of the tables, thanks. The
   data for wp_options reads (sorry for the weird formatting):
 * Table Engine? Collation? Data Length? Index Length? Data Free? Auto Increment?
   Rows? Comment?
 * wp_options InnoDB utf8_general_ci 497,565,696 442,368 5,242,880 1,934,283 ~ 13,254
 * I clicked wp_options and then “select data”, I exported to CSV to check the data
   with Excel but there I have only 407 rows, not 13,254. Makes that any sense? 
   I’m afraid I don’t know anything about SQL 🙁
 * I’m going to start deleting the less essential plugins and see what does happen.
 *  Thread Starter [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * (@drfelip)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608492)
 * I deleted the less essential plugins but database size stays more or less the
   same. Using “select” for the table didn’t really help me, as I don’t know what
   to look for.
 *  Thread Starter [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * (@drfelip)
 * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608494)
 * Finally my service provider optimized my tables for me (I tried to make that 
   myself, but I couldn’t as the database was locked). After deleting plugins and
   optimizing the database, it takes only 11 MB!
 * Thanks for your help!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘Database growing really fast’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [database](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 7 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [drfelip](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drfelip/)
 * Last activity: [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-growing-really-fast/#post-6608494)
 * Status: resolved

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