8. Fixing Autoload Issues
If your website is becoming more and more sluggish and slow to respond, one of the things you may want to look into is data that is autoloaded on every page of your site when it doesn’t need to be. For example, a forms plugin that loads data on every page instead of only where forms are actually located on the site.
Many developers will set the autoload flag to “yes” in their plugin code when it really should be set to “no“. When autoload is set to “yes” and the plugin does not store data in its own tables, the wp_options table in your database can become unnecessarily bloated, and can slow database queries down to a crawl. This in turn affects overall site performance.
8.1 Checking Autoload Size
Copy chapter anchor to clipboardIdeally, autoloaded data should be less than 1Mb. Anything between 3Mb to 5Mb would tend to indicate that there are things that can be optimized. If it’s 10Mb or more, this indicates performance issues that should be addressed as soon as possible.
To check the overall size of autoloaded data in the wp_options table of your database, log into phpMyAdmin and click on the database name in the left-hand sidebar (if your site is hosted with WPMU DEV, you can access the database directly from your Hub).
Then, under the SQL tab, enter the following query and click the Go button at the bottom-right. Be sure to adjust the wp_ prefix if you use a different table prefix in your database.
SELECT SUM(LENGTH(option_value)) as autoload_size FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes';
You’ll then see the overall autoload_size displayed, in bytes, just beneath the query box. The example below shows an overall size of just under 1.2Mb, which is acceptable.
8.2 Disable Autoload Using CLI
Copy chapter anchor to clipboardIf your site is hosted with WPMU DEV and you prefer using a command-line option, you can run the following CLI command to generate the query needed to disable the Top Autoload if it exceeds 800KB
wp hosting check autoload
Once the query is generated, use wp db cli or wp db query to execute the queries. Alternatively, you can run the generated query in PHPMyAdmin.
In either case, clearing the object cache is necessary. It can be done by either executing the command wp cache flush or by clearing the object cache from the Hub by navigating to Hub -> Hosting -> Tools
8.3 Getting Help to Fix Autoload Issues
Copy chapter anchor to clipboardIf your site is hosted with WPMU DEV and you suspect a possible autoload issue, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team, and we’ll be happy to investigate and help you get things cleaned up.
If your site is hosted elsewhere, you can get in touch with your host’s support team to help out.
Or, if you like to dig into things and fix them yourself, check out this excellent article by our friends over at Kinsta: How to Clean up Your wp_options Table and Autoloaded Data
8.4 Get Support
Copy chapter anchor to clipboardIf you still have questions or need assistance after reading this document, please don’t hesitate to contact our support superheroes using the available options under the Support tab in your Hub or via the Support tab in your WPMU DEV Dashboard.
