WP-Sweep

Contributors: GamerZ
Donate link: https://lesterchan.net/site/donation/
Tags: sweep, cleanup, optimize, database, revisions
Requires at least: 6.8
Tested up to: 7.1
Stable tag: 2.0.1
Requires PHP: 8.2
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

WP-Sweep allows you to clean up unused, orphaned and duplicated data in your WordPress. It also optimizes your database tables.

Description

WP-Sweep finds the rows WordPress leaves behind and removes them. Revisions of posts you edited years ago, meta belonging to a post that was deleted, terms attached to nothing, term relationships pointing at posts that no longer exist, expired transients: none of it is visible anywhere in wp-admin, and all of it is in your database.

It uses the proper WordPress delete functions wherever they can reach the row, rather than running raw delete queries, so the hooks other plugins rely on still fire. Only the rows the API refuses to touch — orphaned meta whose object ID is 0 — are deleted directly.

Features

• Revisions
• Auto drafts
• Deleted posts
• Unapproved comments
• Spammed comments
• Deleted comments
• Orphaned post meta
• Orphaned comment meta
• Orphaned user meta
• Orphaned term meta
• Orphaned term relationships
• Unused terms
• Duplicated post meta
• Duplicated comment meta
• Duplicated user meta
• Duplicated term meta
• Transient options
• oEmbed caches in post meta
• Optimizes database tables

Delete functions used

• wp_delete_post_revision()
• wp_delete_post()
• wp_delete_comment()
• delete_post_meta()
• delete_comment_meta()
• delete_user_meta()
• delete_term_meta()
• wp_remove_object_terms()
• wp_delete_term()
• delete_transient()
• delete_site_transient()

Known incompatibilities

These plugins keep data in places WP-Sweep reads as orphaned. Protect their meta keys with the filters under Usage before sweeping.

• Custom Fonts
• Elementor Popup Builder
• MailPress
• Meta Slider
• Polylang
• Slider Revolution
• Viba Portfolio
• WPML

Donations

I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations.

Installation

1. Install and activate the plugin. The screen appears at WP-Admin -> Tools -> WP-Sweep.
2. Back your database up before you sweep anything. Every sweep is irreversible, and there is no undo.

Usage

Every sweep is irreversible, so back your database up first.

The screen lists every sweep with a short description of what it removes, how many items that is, and what proportion of the table they are. Tick the ones you want and use the Sweep bulk action, or use each row's Sweep and Details buttons one at a time. Nothing on the screen needs JavaScript: the buttons are ordinary links and the bulk action is an ordinary form.

There is no settings screen. The one thing worth tuning — how many items Details lists, 500 by default — is the wp_sweep_limit_details filter. The cap exists because the whole sample is held in memory and written into the page.

WP-CLI

wp sweep --all
wp sweep revisions
wp sweep revisions auto_drafts deleted_posts

REST API

All three routes need the activate_plugins capability.

GET    /wp-json/sweep/v1/count/<name>
GET    /wp-json/sweep/v1/details/<name>
DELETE /wp-json/sweep/v1/sweep/<name>

Item names

revisions, auto_drafts, deleted_posts, unapproved_comments, spam_comments, deleted_comments, transient_options, orphan_postmeta, orphan_commentmeta, orphan_usermeta, orphan_termmeta, orphan_term_relationships, unused_terms, duplicated_postmeta, duplicated_commentmeta, duplicated_usermeta, duplicated_termmeta, optimize_database, oembed_postmeta.

Filters

• wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist (array) — post meta keys that must never be deleted, by the orphaned or the duplicated post meta sweep. * matches any run of characters. Default: empty.
• wp_sweep_commentmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for comment meta.
• wp_sweep_usermeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for user meta.
• wp_sweep_termmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for term meta.
• wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies (array) — taxonomies left out of the orphaned term relationships sweep. Default: array( 'link_category' ).
• wp_sweep_excluded_termids (array) — term IDs left out of the unused terms sweep. Default: each taxonomy's default term, plus any term that is the parent of another.
• wp_sweep_limit_details (int) — how many items a Details list shows. Default: 500.
• wp_sweep_defer_counts (bool) — whether the Sweep screen renders first and fetches its counts afterwards, one at a time. Return false to compute every count with the page, as versions before 2.0.1 always did. Default: true.
• wp_sweep_capability (string $capability, string $context) — the capability required. $context is one of sweep, ajax or rest.
• wp_sweep_total_count (int $count, string $name) — the total number of rows a sweep's percentage is measured against.
• wp_sweep_count (int $count, string $name) — how many items a sweep would remove.
• wp_sweep_details (array $details, string $name) — the sample list shown by Details.
• wp_sweep_sweep (string $message, string $name) — the message reported after a sweep has run.

Actions

wp_sweep_admin_post_sweep, wp_sweep_admin_comment_sweep, wp_sweep_admin_user_sweep, wp_sweep_admin_term_sweep, wp_sweep_admin_option_sweep and wp_sweep_admin_database_sweep all fire below the sweep table, in that order.

Protect specific post meta keys from being swept:

add_filter( 'wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist', function ( $meta_keys ) {
	$meta_keys[] = '_my_plugin_setting';
	$meta_keys[] = '_acme_*';
	return $meta_keys;
} );

Exclude an additional taxonomy from the orphaned term relationships sweep:

add_filter( 'wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies', function ( $taxonomies ) {
	$taxonomies[] = 'product_type';
	return $taxonomies;
} );

Frequently Asked Questions

The Tools -> Sweep screen has a new address

It is still under Tools, but the address changed from tools.php?page=wp-sweep/admin.php to tools.php?page=wp-sweep. Update any bookmark.

The old address was the legacy "plugin file as menu slug" form, which put the plugin's installation directory name into the page URL. That is also why the screen used to break for anyone who installed WP-Sweep under a different directory name — renamed by hand, or unzipped as wp-sweep-2.0.0. Neither happens now.

Where did Sweep All go?

Every row has a checkbox and the table has a Sweep bulk action, so ticking the header checkbox and applying it does what Sweep All did — and lets you leave out the ones you do not want.

My snippet calling WPSweep::get_instance() stopped working

The classes are renamed in 2.0.0:

• WPSweep is now WP_Sweep
• WPSweep_Api is now WP_Sweep_API
• WPSweep_Command is now WP_Sweep_Command

So WPSweep::get_instance()->sweep( 'revisions' ) becomes WP_Sweep::get_instance()->sweep( 'revisions' ). There is no compatibility alias, so the old name raises a fatal error rather than failing quietly.

Every filter and every wp_sweep_admin_*_sweep action keeps the name it had.

Which filters can I use to protect data from being swept?

Four per-type filters take a list of meta keys that must never be deleted, and each supports * as a wildcard:

add_filter( 'wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist', function ( $keys ) {
	$keys[] = '_my_plugin_setting';
	$keys[] = '_acme_*';
	return $keys;
} );

The same applies to wp_sweep_commentmeta_whitelist, wp_sweep_usermeta_whitelist and wp_sweep_termmeta_whitelist. Terms are protected with wp_sweep_excluded_termids, and taxonomies are kept out of the orphaned term relationships sweep with wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies.

In 2.0.0 these lists also protect the duplicated meta sweeps, which the documentation always said they did and the code never did.

A key I protected was swept anyway, or far too much was kept

Before 2.0.0 the exclusion was a SQL LIKE clause, and LIKE treats an underscore as a single-character wildcard. A pattern of _my_key therefore also matched Xmy!key, and a good deal else. Matching happens in PHP now, so an underscore is an underscore and only * is a wildcard. Check your list if you were relying on the old behaviour.

Does WP-Sweep leave anything behind when I delete it?

Nothing. WP-Sweep stores no option rows, creates no database tables, registers no capabilities and schedules no events. uninstall.php runs anyway and sweeps up after itself across a whole network rather than the first hundred sites.

Screenshots

1. Tools -> WP-Sweep, listing every sweep with what it removes and how much of it there is
2. A Details list, showing a sample of what one sweep would remove
3. The same screen after a bulk sweep, reporting what went

Changelog

2.0.1

• NEW: A Sweep link on the plugin's row of the Plugins screen, opening Tools -> Sweep.
• FIXED: The Sweep screen timed out on large databases. 2.0.0 computed every count before printing a byte — and asked for each table's total row count once per row instead of once, so SELECT COUNT(*) ran against the postmeta table four times per load. The screen now renders at once and fetches the counts afterwards, one request at a time, so no single request outlives PHP's time limit. Without JavaScript, a link computes them with the page the way 2.0.0 always did, and the new wp_sweep_defer_counts filter restores that behaviour outright.
• FIXED: Counting the duplicated meta sweeps fetched every duplicate row's ids into PHP through GROUP_CONCAT, just to add them up. On a postmeta table with millions of duplicates that alone could exhaust the request. The count now reads per-key totals only; the ids are read where they are needed, by the sweep that deletes them.

2.0.0

• FIXED: Unused Terms read "unused" off the count column, and core's own counter counts published posts — so a term used only by drafts, pending posts, private posts or posts in the trash showed a count of zero and was deleted, taking its relationships with it. Those posts came back untagged with nothing to say why. A term now has to be attached to nothing at all
• FIXED: Sweeping the terms of a taxonomy nothing registers any more finished with DELETE FROM wp_terms WHERE term_id NOT IN ( SELECT term_id FROM wp_term_taxonomy ), which is every stray row in the table rather than the ones the sweep had just orphaned. Rows the screen had neither counted nor listed were deleted along with them. It names the terms it orphaned now
• FIXED: Orphaned Term Relationships decided a row was an orphan by looking for its object_id in wp_posts — which only asks the right question when the taxonomy belongs to posts. For a taxonomy registered against users or comments, object_id is a user or comment ID, so every relationship whose ID happened to outnumber the posts was deleted while the user was still there. link_category was excluded by hand for exactly this reason; the exclusion is now derived from what each taxonomy is registered against
• FIXED: The oEmbed sweep matched %_oembed_%, and in a LIKE pattern an underscore matches any single character — so it meant "any meta key containing oembed with a character either side", and it was a contains match rather than a prefix one. Keys belonging to other plugins were hard-deleted along with the caches. WordPress writes these as _oembed_{hash}, so the pattern is now anchored at the start with its underscores escaped
• FIXED: The oEmbed sweep was the one meta sweep that never consulted the protected-keys list, so a key a site had explicitly added to wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist was deleted anyway — the list was even read for it and then ignored
• FIXED: Optimising the database ran SHOW TABLES with no prefix, which is every table in the schema. On a database shared between installs — an ordinary hosting arrangement — the details view listed every co-tenant's tables, and the sweep issued OPTIMIZE TABLE against installs this administrator does not administer. It is scoped to this install's prefix now, with wp_sweep_optimize_tables for a site that wants more
• BREAKING: Requires WordPress 6.8 and PHP 8.2.
• BREAKING: The screen stays under Tools but its address changed, from tools.php?page=wp-sweep/admin.php to tools.php?page=wp-sweep. The old form put the installation directory name into the URL.
• BREAKING: The classes are renamed WPSweep -> WP_Sweep, WPSweep_Api -> WP_Sweep_API and WPSweep_Command -> WP_Sweep_Command. Every filter and action keeps its name.
• BREAKING: WP_Sweep::$limit_details is gone. Read it with limit_details() and change it with the wp_sweep_limit_details filter.
• BREAKING: The six wp_sweep_admin_*_sweep actions fire below the single sweep table, in the order they always had, rather than below six separate ones.
• BREAKING: Sweep All is gone. Tick the header checkbox and apply the Sweep bulk action instead, which does the same thing and lets you leave rows out.
• NEW: Bulk sweeping. Tick the sweeps you want and run them in one go instead of one click at a time.
• NEW: The sweeps are grouped on screen. The unfiltered view puts each under a heading with an icon -- Post, Comment, User, Term, Option, Database -- while staying one table, so a single bulk sweep still runs everything you tick. Sorting a column drops the headings rather than leaving them describing rows they no longer group.
• NEW: Group filters and sortable columns, from a real WP_List_Table.
• NEW: The whole screen works with JavaScript turned off. The row actions are ordinary nonced links and the bulk action is an ordinary form post.
• NEW: The meta key whitelists protect the duplicated meta sweeps as well as the orphaned ones, which the readme always claimed and the code never did.
• NEW: wp_sweep_capability and wp_sweep_limit_details filters. WP-Sweep has no settings screen: wp_sweep_limit_details is how the Details cap is changed.
• NEW: Every sweep carries a description of what it removes, shown under its name, and counts worth acting on are emphasised.
• NEW: An uninstall.php that cleans up across a whole network rather than the first hundred sites. WP-Sweep itself stores nothing: no option rows, no tables, no capabilities and no scheduled events.
• NEW: Restructured into includes/, following the Plugin Handbook.
• NEW: PHPUnit and vitest suites, and GitHub Actions CI across six WordPress and PHP combinations, single site and multisite.
• CHANGED: Meta key exclusions are matched in PHP rather than with SQL LIKE, so an underscore in a protected key is an underscore rather than a wildcard.
• CHANGED: Every database call goes through one method, and every query is prepared.
• FIXED: A stored XSS on the admin screen. The Details list was built by string concatenation and injected as HTML, so a comment author name containing markup ran as script in the administrator's browser.
• FIXED: The plugin no longer builds paths from its own directory name, so the admin script loads when it is installed under a directory other than wp-sweep.
• FIXED: Filtering wp_sweep_excluded_termids to an empty array produced invalid SQL, leaving the Unused Terms count blank.
• FIXED: A term was excluded from the Unused Terms sweep whenever its ID matched a default_<taxonomy> option, even if that option pointed at a term that no longer exists. WordPress ships default_link_category set to 2, so on most sites whatever term held ID 2 quietly refused to sweep.
• FIXED: Sweeping without JavaScript deleted data and displayed nothing; the result is now shown.
• FIXED: The multisite uninstall loop stopped at 100 sites, hydrated whole site objects to read one column, and left the switch stack unwound by one.
• FIXED: Request parameters are sanitized and validated against the plugin's own list of sweeps.
• FIXED: The two "Sweep Complete" messages wp sweep prints were the only strings in the plugin that were never passed through the translation functions

Upgrade Notice

2.0.0

Requires WordPress 6.8 and PHP 8.2.

The screen's address changed, though it is still at Tools -> WP-Sweep: tools.php?page=wp-sweep/admin.php is now tools.php?page=wp-sweep. The old form embedded the plugin's folder name, which broke the screen for anyone who installed WP-Sweep under a different one.

Sweep All is gone. Every row has a checkbox; tick the one in the header and apply the Sweep bulk action for the same effect, with the option of leaving rows out.

Code holding the singleton needs editing. WPSweep::get_instance() is now WP_Sweep::get_instance(), and the $sweep->limit_details property is now the $sweep->limit_details() method. The old spellings fail rather than falling back. Filter and action names are unchanged, as are the wp sweep command and the /wp-json/sweep/v1/ routes.

Two sweeps remove less than they did, deliberately. Meta keys protected by the whitelist filters are honoured by the duplicated meta sweeps as well as the orphaned ones, which is what the documentation always said. Matching also moved out of SQL, so an underscore in a protected key is matched literally rather than as a wildcard: _my_key protects that key and nothing else. Review your list if you relied on the old behaviour.