“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.
Price: Free with paid addons
4. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
The more you develop your WordPress database, the more harm your business will suffer if a hacker breaches that database or you lose it to a technical glitch.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin is one of the most popular backup plugins and offers a simple and safe way to schedule backups. With this WordPress database plugin, you can back up your entire database or individual sets of files and store them in the cloud via Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more. When you need to restore, UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin makes it as easy as clicking a button.
Price: Different versions range from $70/yr – $195/yr
5. WP-Optimize
Site speed is key to SEO and maintaining a good user experience. Users will leave sites that load too slowly, especially on mobile, and that means lost customers and signals to search engines that your site doesn’t offer what users want. A slow site means bounce rates will compound with falling SERP results.
With the WP-Optimize plugin, you can boost your site’s speed by cleaning up your database, compressing images, and caching your WordPress site. Keeping your eyes out for ways to optimize your site is key to your business’s success. As you build out more database strategies, make sure big data doesn’t become an albatross around your site’s neck.
Price: Free
6. WP Clean Up Optimizer
If you’re looking for a more hands-off way to maintain your database, the WP Clean Up Optimizer plugin enables you to automatically clean up old and obsolete data.
With this plugin, you can schedule cleaning, optimizing, deleting, and repairing operations so that your database can keep running efficiently. Depending on your specifications, WP Clean Up Optimizer can remove auto drafts, unapproved comments, orphaned posts, revisions, and more.
Price: Free with optional, paid pro plans
7. WP Database Reset
Experimentation is an essential part of improving your website but if resetting after is a pain, you might be tempted to avoid it altogether. If, for instance, you’re testing out new plugins or themes, the process of deleting your current WordPress installation and re-installing will cost more time and effort than it might be worth.
With the WordPress Database Reset plugin, you can reset your WordPress database and return it to its default settings. You can do this with one click rather than going through the WordPress installation process or directly modifying any files. Depending on your needs, you can also reset only specific database tables.
Price: Free
8. All-in-One WP Migration
If you want an effective database, it has to be movable when you need it to be. The last thing you want is your database to hold you back when you consider migrating your WordPress site.
The All-in-One WP Migration plugin lets you export your entire WordPress site without you needing to have any technical knowledge or skills. This export includes things like media files, plugins, and themes, but most importantly, it brings your entire database with you. This plugin also offers find-and-replace operations, so migration can also be an opportunity to clean your database up.
Price: Free
9. Custom Database Applications by Caspio
Caspio is part of the low-code revolution enabling people to build applications without coding knowledge. Caspio offers a platform that enables non-technical people to build database applications. Any danger of potentially amateurish work is de-risked by Caspio’s security and reliability features.
Caspio offers this Custom Database Applications plugin so that WordPress site owners can design database tables, forms, reports, and business applications with simple tools. Once you’ve built what you want, you can use this plugin to embed Caspio apps on any of your WordPress posts or pages by copying and pasting shortcode.
Price: Free with optional, paid plans
What’s your WordPress database strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
