In the Site Health section of your WordPress site you might see the warning:
Autoloaded options could affect performance
This is related to the options that themes and plugins request on every page load of your site. If there are too many, it will slow down the load time of the page. The Site Health warning triggers when the options are above 800kb.
What problem does too many autoloaded options cause?
To simplify, the more options that are autoloaded, the bigger the database request becomes. The bigger the request, the slower your page will load.
This problem will primarily affect backend and uncached pages. When a page is cached there won’t be any database calls so this problem won’t be noticeable.
But on important pages that can’t be cached, like cart and checkout pages, if database queries are slow, it can affect the overall load time. If you have a high traffic site, the problem will compound. A slow server response time leads to other metrics like LCP being slower and this will affect your site’s Core Web Vitals.
It can also affect the backend performance and you’ll notice a sluggish experience.
Using object caching, like Redis, can help mitigate such issues, but it’s better to address the problem at the source.
How to fix too many autoloaded options?
To fix this recommendation you’ll need a database clean-up plugin. In this article we’ll look at two tools you can use:
- For beginners: AAA Option Optimizer
- For more advanced/power users: Advanced Database Cleaner
AAA Option Optimizer is a bit more user-friendly compared to Advanced Database Cleaner which has a lot more features and a less intuitive interface.
I’ll show you how to use both.
Guidelines before you get started
It’s important to know that autoloading options isn’t inherently bad, and the goal isn’t to have zero autoloaded options.
The goal here is to restore balance, and have a sensible amount of autoloading, and only for those plugins/themes that are actually in use.
Felix Arntz has a great article about the ins and outs of it. If you want a deeper, more technical understanding of the topic, I recommend reading his guide.
So what should be autoloaded?
Common wisdom is that the following can and should be autoloaded:
- Core WordPress options
- Your active theme’s options
- Active plugins’ options – which are used on most/all page loads
What should not be autoloaded?
As you go through the process, you’ll probably find that a lot of options are being loaded which are associated with deactivated or deleted plugins and themes, and these are low-hanging fruit to clean up.
Since you’ll be working with the database, it’s best practice to make a backup first, just in case.
AAA Option Optimizer
The reason I like this plugin for beginners is that it is focused specifically on fixing autoloaded options, nothing else, and the interface is easier to manage than Advanced Database Cleaner.
After installing the plugin, its author recommends that you click around your site and load some pages, both frontend and backend pages. This allows the plugin to try and detect which options are being used and which aren’t.
After that, go to Tools > Option Optimizer to find the plugin settings.
You’ll mostly be concerned with the Unused, but autoloaded tab.
Click on the size column to sort it with the largest entries first.
Now you have to review the options and try to confirm if they should be autoloaded or not. Since the plugin has determined they are unused, your job is to double-check that.
How to check which theme or plugin an option belongs to
The Source column will let you know where the option is coming from – WordPress core, or from a theme or plugin.
However, you will likely see a lot of “unknown” which makes things a little trickier.
Sometimes the name of the option will obviously indicate its source, e.g. rank-math-options-titles is clearly from the Rank Math plugin.
But others may be less obvious. In that case, there are a few things you can try:
Click show to see the contents of the option
Seeing what’s saved in the option will give you further clues. I checked woo_template which I wasn’t sure if it was related to WooCommerce. In the options I can see it’s coming from an ancient theme that I no longer have installed on the site:
In this case I’d delete the data instead of just preventing the autoload.
Google the option name
A simple Google search will often let you know what the option name is related to.
Use String Locator to search your site
Use a plugin like String Locator to search for the option name – you will likely find it in some plugin files.
In the screenshot below, I searched for an option I found called ssa_settings_json and found it within the Simply Schedule Appointments plugin:
Based on whether or not that plugin is currently active on my site, I would either keep it autoloaded if it’s active, or unload it otherwise.
Advanced DB Cleaner
This plugin does more than let you manage autoloaded options, so the various settings might be overwhelming for a beginner. But it’s a great plugin for cleaning up various parts of your database.
To work on autoloaded options, click on Options from its menu.
You’ll probably see the Autoload size warning here and you can click Filter to see the list sorted by the largest items.
Unfortunately in the free version it won’t detect which theme/plugins options are associated with. You would need the Pro version for that. So you can use the steps provided above to determine which plugins/themes the options are associated with
To either delete the data or turn the autoload off, click the 3 dots at the right and make your selection.
Advanced Database Cleaner will let you know when your autoloaded options are back at a sensible level:
If you don’t change your theme and plugins on your site, you shouldn’t have to go through this process too often.
But it could be useful to review it after installing/removing plugins or switching your theme, to avoid outdated data building up.