The Smart Cleanup Tools Plugin: A Powerful Database Cleaner

Is your blog’s performance running on the slow side? Well, the first thing you should do is check out our post, Save On Bandwidth, which will help improve your blog’s page speed. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Other issues that could lead to a slower speed on your blog include posts revisions, Expired Transient Records, Database Overhead, Trashed Posts Records, Auto Draft Posts Records, Orphaned Commentmeta Records, and much more. You should take a look at the paid plugin called Smart Cleanup Tools. Read below to find out it’s features and how it’s being used on WPOutcast.

The Smart Cleanup Tools plugin is the all in one plugin that will clean and speed up your blog, as well as continually keep it running in tip-top shape. You can even set this plugin on an automated schedule, giving you one less item on your ‘to do’ list.

Here is a look at the features and WPOutcast’s cleanup statistics.

Features

• Remove WooCommerce sessions in options table
• Remove orphaned terms records
• Remove oEmbed cached postmeta records
• Remove orphaned relationships records
• Remove expired transient records (also in multisite mode)
• Remove GravityForms spammed submissions
• Remove GravityForms trashed submissions
• Remove auto-draft posts records
• Remove trashed posts records
• Remove spammed posts records
• Remove published posts revisions records
• Remove orphaned posts revisions records
• Remove trashed comments records
• Remove unapproved comments records
• Remove spammed comments records
• Remove orphaned postmeta records
• Remove orphaned comment meta records
• Remove orphaned comments records
• Remove RSS feeds cache
• Remove empty user meta records
• Remove transient records (also in multisite mode)
• Remove database overhead (also in multisite mode)

Other Features

• WordPress Toolbar Menu with quick access and cleanup options
• Tools to export and import plugin settings and scheduled jobs
• Disable tools you don’t want to use from cleanup and reset panels
• Log all executed SQL queries during cleanup check into file
• Log all executed SQL queries during cleanup execution into file
• Log work with normal and scheduled executions
• Gathers statistical data for each tool used
• Gathers global statistics for saved database space
• Uses AJAX for cleanup operation executing
• Support translation and includes POT file

Walk Through Of The Plugin Settings

I left the majority of the setting on default. Here are two screenshots of the settings page.

As you can see, I didn’t make a lot of changes. However, I do run this plugin manually instead of using the automated scheduled system. After when I am done editing/writing content or tinkering with the theme files, I’ll run the cleanup process as the last thing I do before I leave the blog.

Plugin Statistics

I don’t check these statistics too often, but as you can, the plugin really keeps our site lean and clean.

Schedule Cleanups To Run Anytime

If you want your blog running smoothly, but don’t want to go through the plugin manually, simply set a schedule for when each item should be cleaned.

Here is the reason why I don’t schedule automatic clean-ups: when blog comments are submitted on WPOutcast, they have to be manually approved. If the Smart Cleanup Tools plugin is scheduled to run, it will delete all pending blog comments. That means I could lose an excellent comment from a reader and possibly the loyalty of that reader. The best time to run this plugin is after you publish a blog post. That’s exactly what I have been doing for years.

Time to Cleanup The Database

After publishing a post and doing some work on the back-end, it’s time to clean out the junk. After verifying that there are no pending comments, move to the clean-up page and enable all. I do remove all spam comments that my Akismet Plugin catches, as they are in fact spam. Not all boxes will have data to cleanup all the time. Depending on how much work you’ve done to your blog recently will affect the amount of clean up needed.

After I select enable all, I click on the run cleanup button and see the results below.

For a very affordable price, the Smart Cleanup Tools is well worth it. I have never had to get support on this plugin and you get a lifetime of updates. This plugin is better than the free ones in the WordPress plugin directory. I’ve been a proud member of Code Canyon since 2012 and I have purchased 4 plugins in that time span to use on my blogs.

If this plugin has caught your attention, do give it a try to see if it’s easier to use than other plugins. The fewer plugins the better and this one does a few jobs all in one click.

The Alternative Plugin

The WP-Optimize plugin is a great free alternative plugin to the one mentioned above. Try out this free one then compare the features and see which one suites you best. There is always more than 1 plugin to choose from but some have a tad more features that make it a paid one.

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