For example, i have a blog with 30,000 daily visitors and over 40,000 posts and in order to maintain that blog i have to run certain queries on a weekly basis to ensure my database is not overloaded with useless data as WordPress has many long slow queries when posting which require full table scans and the smaller your database the faster it will run.

Backup Your Database

Before you run any SQL Queries on your Database it is 100% recommended that you make a backup!

You can backup your database with WordPress Plugins such as WP-DBManager and WP-DB-Backup or through phpMyAdmin directly.

If you decide to backup your WordPress database manually, follow these steps:

1. Login to your phpMyAdmin.
2. Select your WordPress database.
3. Click on Export at the top of the navigation.
4. Select the tables you want to backup, or select all tables to backup the whole database.
5. Select SQL to export as .sql extension.
6. Check the “Save as file” checkbox.
7. Choose compression type, select gzipped to compress the database to a smaller size.
8. Finally click Go, and a download window will prompt you to save your backup database file.

14 WordPress SQL Queries

In order to run any of these SQL Queries you need access to phpMyAdmin or you can use WordPress SQL Executioner which allows you to run SQL Queries on your database through WordPress.

In no particular order…

1. Change Your Website URL and Home URL

WordPress stores your Website URL and HOME URL in the database to set an absolute path, if for example you are changing domain names you will need to alter these fields and you can do this with an SQL Query.

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.originalsiteurl.com', 'http://www.newsiteurl.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

2. Change your Website GUID

If you are moving your Blog to a new domain you will need to update the GUID field in wp_posts. This is a crucial change as it sets the absolute path for your posts and pages.

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://www.originalsiteurl.com', 'http://www.newsiteurl.com');

3. Change Domain URL in Content

If you are changing domains then the chances are your posts will contain URLs for your old domain but not to worry, you can change all those URLs with this query.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (post_content, 'http://www.originalsiteurl.com', 'http://www.newsiteurl.com');

4. Change Your WordPress Password

Forgetting a Password is very common and can be quite frustrating but you can soon change your WordPress Password with a simple query. This query also turns your password into a MD5 hash which offers better protection. You can also change the password for other users on your blog, just replace “admin” with their username.

UPDATE 'wp_users' SET 'user_pass' = MD5('PASSWORD') WHERE 'user_login' ='admin'

5. Batch Delete Spam Comments

Spam comments can be an absolute nightmare on your blog especially if you are on holiday for example and you come back to find 100′s of random comments. You can delete all of these unapproved comments with a simple query.

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '0';

6. Batch Delete Posts

On my most popular blog i had 40,000 posts where at least 15,000 were old and pointless now so i had to remove them, if i were to do this manually it would take all day but luckily there is a query. Please take care when entering the dates replacing “2010-01-01″, once posts re deleted you can’t get them back unless you have a database backup!

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_date < '2010-01-01 19:18:00' AND post_status = 'publish'

7. Delete Redundant Tags

If you have lots of tags that aren’t linked to any posts e.g after you have deleted posts, then you can remove all non-linked tags with this query. Simply replace “database_name” with the name of your database and then run the query.

DELETE a,c
FROM
	database_name.wp_terms AS a
	LEFT JOIN database_name.wp_term_taxonomy AS c ON a.term_id = c.term_id
	LEFT JOIN database_name.wp_term_relationships AS b ON b.term_taxonomy_id = c.term_taxonomy_id
WHERE (
	c.taxonomy = 'post_tag' AND
	c.count = 0
	)

8. Delete Redundant Post Meta

Data related to posts can take up a lot of space in your database from plugins such as Post Ratings, Post Views etc, but once you delete a post that Post Meta is still stored in the database taking up space, use the following query to remove this useless data.

DELETE pm

FROM wp_postmeta pm

LEFT JOIN wp_posts wp ON wp.ID = pm.post_id

WHERE wp.ID IS NULL

9. Disable All Plugins At Once

If for some reason you need to disable all your WordPress Plugins then the following query is for you.

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = '' WHERE option_name = 'active_plugins';

10. Disable Comments On Old Posts

If you run a blog like this one where you like to communicate with your posters on recent posts and struggle to find time to reply to comments on your old posts then you can use this query to disable comments on posts before a certain period. Simply replace 2009-01-01 with a preferred date.

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'closed' WHERE post_date < '2009-01-01' AND post_status = 'publish';

11. Delete Comments With A Specific URL

If you have spam comments that all contain the same URL then this query allows you to remove them in one go. The following query will delete all comments with a specific url. The “%” signs means that any url containing the string within the % signs will be deleted.

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_author_url LIKE "%wpbeginner%" ;

12. Transfer Posts from User A to User B

If you have different posters on your blog and they decide to leave, you can simply remove all their posts to another account (ie yours) with this query. You will need the IDs of both the old and new author to do this.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_author=NEW_AUTHOR_ID WHERE post_author=OLD_AUTHOR_ID;

13. Export All Commentors Emails Without Duplicates

Over time your blog with get comments and from these comments WordPress stores the emails which you can export for email campaigns. Once you have the result, under Query results operations, select export to export all the emails in phpMyAdmin.

SELECT DISTINCT comment_author_email FROM wp_comments;

14. Delete Pingbacks

Some of your popular articles will get many pingbacks and these can take up space in your database, you can delete all the records with this query.

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = 'pingback';

Start Tidying Your Blog Today!

I can’t tell you how many times these SQL Queries have saved me in the past on some of my larger blogs so enjoy!

Nick

In order to create a good website, you need to know what affect colours can have on people. People subconsciously react to colours & associate them with different emotions and feelings. Colours don’t just stir up emotions & feelings that might influence how a site is seen but they can also be cleverly used to direct users to specific sections of your site.

Every single colour that you can possibly think of is used on the internet these days, which means that picking the right colours can be a mammoth task. Here is a swift summary of how some colours can provoke certain reactions.

Green is linked with nature, peace and jealousy. It is also a truly relaxing colour and is perfect to use for a relaxing effect. The colour white stirs up feelings of purity, simplicity, emptiness and innocence. If used as the main colour of a site, it creates a clean and simple feel. Green is linked to organic, nature and relaxation. The paler end of the green spectrum can be used to give a site a relaxed feel.

Blue is most commonly associated with business sites as it’s a strong colour that’s associated with confidence, coldness, depression, water and peace. The colour blue is linked with confidence, loyalty and coolness. It’s the best-known colour in the world and it’s used by many companies to create a feeling of strength & confidence.

Black is linked to feelings of mystery and refinement. An extremely popular colour in design and photo web sites, it can be used effectively to contrast and liven up other colours.

Grey can be associated with respect, humility, decay and boredom. It’s used a lot to form shiny gradients in website design to give a professional, ordinary feel to a site.

Orange is strongly associated with spirituality and healing. It’s the colour that symbolizes Buddhism and it has a calming energy about it. It’s a bold colour that is not as lively as yellow but not as deep as red. Full of energy, vibrancy and stimulation, orange is a fantastic colour to use in designing web-sites. It is used to bring youthfulness to a design.

Darker shades of Purple can be very deep and luscious. It is linked to royalty, spirituality, arrogance and luxury. Lighter shades can represent romance and delicacy. It’s a colour that’s not really used much on sites.

With this in mind i used the following colour scheme for my new Free Dating Website

The colour’s role is not just to make your website look good; it can encourage feelings & emotions from the audience. Choosing colours that annoy the end user can have damaging effects on your website, while cleverly selecting can mean that the website meets user expectation.

Something for you to think about on your next website perhaps?

The conversion rate on your website is a clear indication whether your site design is effective or not. I have seen a dramatic increase in conversions from the most simple of changes to my Pitch and/or layout. It is very important that you monitor your web sites conversion rate as you will be able to compare results on changes.

Unknown Purpose

As soon as a vistor lands on your site, he or she should know exactly what the intention of the web site or service is. If your website is too complex, a reader will often search for something and tend to click away from the page before spending time to find it. After all any new visitor on a web site is generally lazy and if they dont get what they were looking for in the first few minutes they will leave.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

I would say that information overload is probably the biggest turnoff for an average web user. If you have lots of links and annoying font sizes then this will tend to overwhelm a reader and make it very difficult for them to find a specific bit of information.

Make sure you have adequate line spacing and choose an easily readable font such as Arial. Break up text with clear concise headings and plenty of visual space, pictures are great and help divide a wall of text which is frankly hard to read and digest.

Call to Action

Getting a visitor to take an action will ensure that your website name remains comfortably in their memory. Your call to action link should be easily seen as soon as a visitor lands on your main page. Whether you are using a call to action to sell this reader something or simply requesting their email for a newsletter. This call to action should literally be in view as soon as anyone lands on your website.

Simple Navigation

If you provide a simple Navigation Menu it will make browsing your website so much easier and will help your visitors find what they are looking for. I recommend creating sub-categories as this will help your visitors find very specific areas of your website that are of interest.

Taking time to make these simple alterations on your web site can significantly increase conversions which means more money in your pocket for the same amount of work.

I remember simply changing the colour of one of my larger websites increased conversions by no less than 20%, trust me little changes can make a huge difference.

Nick

This WordPress to vBulletin Plugin is soo easy to use, simply upload to your Plugins folder, Activate and then you should see something similar to this…

WordPress to vBulletin Poster:

Forum User – Simply enter the ID Number of the Forum Username you wish to use, i recommend you create a new user just for this Automatic Posting Role.
Categories – *:38 means that All Categories in WordPress are selected and the Plugin posts all your WordPress posts to Forum ID 38
Post Template – Simply BBCode used here to adjust how you want your vBulletin Post to look, make it short and snappy.

An Example of how your vBulletin post will look:

The great thing about this Plugin is by Automatically posting on vBulletin you are creating an Inbound Link to your WordPress Post which Google will reward you for.

Download this Plugin

We hope you enjoy the plugin as much as we do!