“Big data” has become a big business buzzword, but that doesn’t mean small and medium-sized business owners can’t take advantage of data-based strategies. With the right mix of WordPress database plugins, you can organize form submissions, optimize your site, and backup and migrate all of your important data.
Data comes in a variety of forms and having an effective WordPress database strategy is essential to managing it all. If you run email marketing campaigns, for example, the ability to store and sort all the contacts you have is essential to making those campaigns succeed. If you run an e-commerce business, coordinating and controlling your catalog is a necessity for ensuring your business runs smoothly.
If a hacker attacks your site or a glitch opens it up to a data breach or other threat, having a good WordPress database strategy can also keep you secure. With the right plugins, your valuable store of data can move with you as you migrate or restore your site.
Here’s a list of 9 WordPress database plugins that you should consider to improve data collection, organization, and security.
1. Participants Database
The Participants Database plugin enables you to build and maintain databases for whatever you want. This plugin is especially useful if you’re trying engage your users or build and maintain member lists, such as subscribers to your newsletter.
The more you can configure a WordPress database plugin, the more you’ll be able to shape it to your needs. With Participants Database, you can define all the information fields you want to manage for each record. You also have the flexibility to enter data manually, import via a CSV file, or let your users create their own records. You can then sort and filter the results you store by field and export as a CSV file.
Price: Free. They also offer several paid and free add-ons.
2. Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
Big data is only useful if it’s well-organized. You might have all the knowledge in the world packed away, but if you can’t find it, it doesn’t mean anything.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions is a simple, “one-click” way to clean up your WordPress database. If you’re creating content regularly and experimenting with different versions along the way, it’s easy to let your revisions get crowded.
With this plugin, you can easily delete revisions of your posts and pages. If you want to keep recent revisions around, you can adjust the scope of your cleanup. You can also delete things like spammed comments, unused tags, and pingbacks.
Price: Free
3. Contact Form 7 Database Addon
Contact forms are useful tools for gathering information users that you can use in a variety of ways. Users that enter their contact information are likely to be good leads with the right nurturing and development.
The Contact Form 7 Database Addon makes it easy to automatically save contact submissions to your WordPress database. From there, you can export the resulting data to a CSV file and filter, search, and manipulate it as you see fit. Contact Form 7 Database Addon is simple and lightweight enough to do this without any configuration. If you want to customize it further, a developer-friendly design makes it easy for a consultant or new hire to fine-tune it.