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Optimized WordPress Database (1.2GB → 300MB) – Fixed Critical Elementor Issues 🚨 Fixed a Critical WordPress Database Issue (1.2GB → 300MB) A client’s Elementor website suddenly started breaking — layouts collapsing, 502 errors, and database write failures. After investigation, I found the root cause: 👉 Database exceeded hosting limit (1GB+) 👉 postmeta table alone was ~957MB 👉 Over 800MB was unused orphan data 🔍 What I did: • Analyzed database using SQL (no blind cleanup) • Identified ~94K orphaned metadata entries • Safely removed unused postmeta records • Rebuilt the table to eliminate fragmentation • Optimized database structure ⚡ Results: • Database reduced from 1239MB → ~300MB • postmeta reduced from 957MB → 20MB • Eliminated 502 errors • Elementor saving issues fixed • Site performance significantly improved 💡 Key Insight: Most WordPress issues aren’t frontend problems — they’re database inefficiencies. 🛠️ Stack: WordPress • Elementor • MySQL • SiteGround If your site feels slow or unstable, the issue might be hidden in your database 👀
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