Safely deleting wp_postmeta content
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Hello everyone!
I am having problems doing database backups and I’m cleaning my database. I don’t have comments enabled and since there were lots of null and empty values in wp_postmeta, I deleted the plugin to make space.
I saw that data was not actually deleted from wp_postmeta. Is there a safe way to delete akismet information from my wp_postmeta (and any other tables if any)? I was surprised that data was not deleted and I have searched and seems that there is no info regarding wp_postmeta (my wp_commentmeta is empty since I have no comments).
Can you please help me on this regard?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Best regards,
David.
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Hi David,
I’ll reply here, in case it becomes useful to others.
Once deleted, the plugin itself can’t really help.This said, all Akismet meta keys stored in the DB start with
akismet_, such asakismet_as_submitted. You could delete them with an SQL command usingWHERE meta_key LIKE 'akismet_%'. But note that you might want to limit that command to a few hundred keys at a time, if you have a very large table, or a slower server.The plugin has its own cleanup methods, if you’d like more inspiration: https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/akismet/trunk/class.akismet.php?rev=1893537#L30
delete_old_comments_meta()delete_orphaned_commentmeta()
Hope this helps.
Hi Daniel.
Akismet does not store any data in WordPress’
wp_postmetatable, only thewp_commentmetatable. Could you post an example record of Akismet-related data in yourwp_postmetatable? The only context in which I know there could have been any is with a very old and very obsolete version of the bbbPress forum software, not WordPress.The methods in the plugin are there to run regularly scheduled cleanup jobs, not to delete all of the Akismet related data itself. They only delete data that the plugin considers obsolete.
Be extremely careful with the delete command, should you choose to use it. For example, it’s
akismet_%, not_akismet. Our meta keys start with the stringakismet_.Here is an article (not by us) that might help you with cleaning up up more than just the Akismet data: https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/clean-wp-commentmeta-wp-postmeta/
But once again, be very careful with any delete queries. My advice is to start with a
SELECTquery, look at the data, then use a (or series of)DELETEquery/ies to only delete what you are sure is okay to get rid of.Hi again,
I’m waiting for some answers from a friend as to what could be the source of those.
As I said, those are not from the Akismet plugin, but they could have been from another plugin that interacted with the Akismet API, and managed their own meta keys. They don’t look like the old bbPress meta keys we’d expect to see, so it would likely have been something else.
As far as we’re concerned, those keys don’t look like anything valuable (truncated key name, NULL value, etc), and if it were me, I’d simply go ahead and delete them. It would be interesting to see if once deleted, more are being created, implying whatever plugin creates them is still active on your site.
I’ll get back to you once my friend has replied.
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