Look how old this is! I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 13 years 4 months 8 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
If you use WordPress to manage a website, thanks to their auto-save feature, and the fact that it stores every revision you ever make, the database can grow quite large.
In turn, I can tell you from experience, that someday, when you least expect it and can least afford it, your large database filled with old junk you don’t need will become corrupted or broken, leading to eventual backup, restore, or changing hosts, or some other problem. Trust me, it will happen.
Because the repair of a corrupted database can get SO time consuming and expensive, I highly recommend you take no chances, and keep your database under control.
The video below is just a 2 minute look at a free plugin called WP Optimize that we’re beginning to use pretty much universally.
It you use it, it could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars, not to mention downtime and headaches, so you can even afford to make a donation to them like I did!
Here’s a very quick video that I made (under two minutes) showing what it does –
