WordPress Site Health: Clean Up Autoloaded Options
Recently, WordPress Site Health (in the dashboard under Tools) has started warning about too many autoloaded options. WordPress stores most settings in the wp_options table. Some of these are loaded automatically via the autoload property for quick availability. Over time, some of these autoloaded options can accumulate — in some cases reaching a considerable size. That is why it makes sense to optimize the wp_options table from time to time and remove old clutter to improve your WordPress website’s performance.
We explain how you can fix this performance issue.
Under Tools -> Site Health, the following message appears:
Autoloaded options can affect performance
Autoloaded options are configuration settings for plugins and themes that are automatically loaded in WordPress on every page request. If too many autoloaded options are present, they can slow down your website. Your website has 1604 autoloaded options (size: 1 MB) in the options table, which may cause your website to be slow. You can review the options that are automatically loaded from your database and remove any options that are no longer needed by your website.
Use plugins for analysis and optimization
The following plugins are well suited, together with manual work in the hosting database administration (phpMyAdmin), to fix the problem.
Before making changes to the database, you should definitely create and download a database backup. For example, an UpdraftPlus backup.
Autoload Checker - Overview of Loaded Options
As a lightweight plugin, Autoload Checker provides a good overview of the number, size, and name of the individual options.
In this example, the list was topped by _transient_dirsize_cache (autoload not necessary).
AAA Option Optimizer refines the analysis and directly lists unused, 'orphaned' options. You can display all autoloaded options and review them sorted by size.
If, despite the plugin’s unused detection, you are still unsure, you have the option to set the autoload parameter to No with one click. If necessary, this can be reversed later.
By deleting, disabling, and doing the necessary research whenever unsure, the autoloaded options can usually be reduced enough for the Site Health warning to disappear.
The Advanced Database Cleaner offers convenient analysis and cleanup functions for a wide range of database tables, but its free version is only very limited in use.
WordPress Services Available for Immediate Booking
- Details
- Last Updated: 16 August 2024
