I’m in the process of changing servers at my current host, and the last website I had to do was this one. Over the course of last weekend, I decided to finish it, and did a mysqldump of my WordPress database, in addition to updating to the latest version to avoid a security flaw. I about had a heart attack when I saw my database (not gzipped) was 3.3 gigabytes. Sure, I’ve been blogging for 5 years (more on that later this month), but 3.3GB? My wife explained to me how it was possible, but I was still a bit stunned.

I’ve had a database plugin, WP-DBManager, installed for some time to automate my database backup. It adds a Database tab to your WordPress admin panel. In addition to backing up your database, it can optimize, repair or drop tables. The default page it pulls up is a list of all tables in your database, with columns showing records, data usage, index usage, and overhead.

Sure enough, an old plugin I haven’t used in a long time, EZ Scrobbler for managing my Last.fm feed, had it’s cache table in the database taking up 2.9GB. I used WP-DBManager’s tab to empty the table, and my database is down to a more manageable 300 MB. I’m glad I now use Last.fm’s widget to show recent tracks played.

I just wish I had remembered to check that before I spent 10 hours this weekend watching 3 gigs transfer over the ‘net.