Wordpress Suicide Plugin: Clean a WP Database

How do you clean a WordPress database of unwanted data, while retaining user or other select information?

Strip out the database using phpMyAdmin? Sure. But a lazier option? WordPress Suicide.

Suicide allows you, quicky and easily, to:-

• delete all blog posts
• delete categories
• delete comments
• delete links
• delete custom fields
• delete users
• delete blog settings

[sniplet guvSellBox]

How to Use WordPress Suicide

Unzip and upload wp-suicide.php to your plugins directory: /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins

Activate the plugin from within your wp-admin Plugins page

Goto Manage > Suicide for the following screen…

… but Back up your Database First!

Before running Suicide, I strongly advise backing up your entire database. I assume no liability, er, either way! Go careful.

Running Suicide

You did back up your database, didn’t you?

OK. Goto Manage > Suicide

By default, a bunch of data is check-marked for deletion. Uncheck the data you want to preserve. Be careful here.

Click the “yes” button and you’ll be prompted one last time. This is the last chance to cancel.

Confirmation Screen

Finally, a progress screen let’s you know what changes have been made to your database.

(I’ve blanked out this blog’s database prefix. Unless you’ve changed that, which you should for security reasons, they’ll say “wp_”.)

This screen also confirms that the plugin has been deactivated, so that you cannot mistakenly use it again.

If you do need it again, guess what, reactivate it!

What have I forgotten? Let me know. Your comments are valued …