Delete Expired Transients vs 0 Day Analytics

0 Day Analytics is a comprehensive WordPress debugging and operational intelligence plugin. It is purpose-built for developers and site administrators who need real-time visibility into their PHP errors, scheduled tasks, database state, outgoing emails, HTTP requests, hook behaviour, and overall site health — all from a single admin interface. Unlike general monitoring services, 0 Day Analytics runs entirely inside your WordPress installation with no third-party data collection. Every module is opt-in and designed with performance in mind. Plugin Website: 0-day-analytics.com User Documentation: User Guide Dashboard A centralised overview page providing at-a-glance status for all active plugin modules. Displays real-time widgets for Error Log, Fatal Errors, Cron Jobs, Transients, HTTP Requests, WP Mail, REST API, and Security — each showing key metrics and recent events. Toggle individual module widgets on or off. The Dashboard is the default landing page when clicking the main plugin menu item, giving administrators immediate visibility into site health and activity without navigating to each module separately. Error Log Manager Read, search, filter, and manage your PHP/WordPress error log without leaving the admin. Engineered for very large (GB-sized) logs using a reverse-line reader that never performs a full-file read. Supports code-context viewing (click any error to see the surrounding source), per-severity filtering, log truncation, and download. Optionally randomise the log filename to reduce exposure. PHP Fatal Error Tracker Captures and stores PHP fatal errors in a dedicated database table, it records PHP errors even if the WP_DEBUG is turned off so they persist even after the log is rotated or overwritten. Each record includes error type, file, line, stack trace, and timestamp — searchable and filterable directly in the admin. Site Performance & Security Scanner Runs 32+ automated checks across three categories — Security, Speed, and Resources used — and presents a scored dashboard with actionable recommendations. Checks include: PHP version, WordPress version, SSL certificate, debug mode exposure, file permissions, database prefix, XML-RPC, login URL, active plugin count, autoloaded options, cron health, page caching, object caching, gzip compression, lazy loading, image optimisation, and more. Google PageSpeed & Core Web Vitals Analyse any URL directly from the WordPress admin using the Google PageSpeed Insights API. Displays Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO scores with Lighthouse category breakdowns for both desktop and mobile. For that you need to provide your own PageSpeed Google API key. URL Tracker & Asset Analyser Automatically tracks visited page URLs on your site. For each recorded URL, you can collect all associated JS, CSS, and media assets (with file sizes), run a Google PageSpeed analysis, and review visit counts — making it easy to audit page weight and performance regressions over time. Cron Manager View, search, edit, manually run, and delete WordPress scheduled tasks. Shows next run time (UTC), recurrence interval, arguments, and last execution status. Supports bulk actions and advanced filtering. Transients Manager Browse, search, edit, and safely delete database transients. Displays expiry time, serialised value (pretty-printed), and size. Bulk delete supports filtered selections. Outgoing HTTP Requests Viewer Logs all outgoing wp_remote_* calls made by WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Records URL, method, status code, response time, triggering plugin, user, and full request/response detail. Export to CSV for external analysis. Advanced filtering by domain, plugin, status, and date range. Mail Logger & Composer Records every email sent through wp_mail() — including headers, body, attachments, CC, and BCC — and stores it in a searchable log. View the rendered email body, resend any logged email, or compose and send new emails directly from the admin. Supports HTML and plain-text previews. SMTP Configuration Configure custom SMTP settings (host, port, encryption, username, password) with a built-in test email tool. Optionally log SMTP debug output to the WordPress debug log. WP Hooks Monitor Define which WordPress actions and filters (core or custom) you want to observe. The Hooks Capture module records each invocation with its parameters, return value (for filters), and a full stack backtrace. Organise monitoring rules into named groups, enable/disable per hook, and review the captured output in a dedicated list view. DB Table Manager Browse, search, edit, and delete records across any table in your WordPress database — including custom plugin tables. Displays table size, engine, collation, row count, and schema information. Supports full and filtered truncation and table drop with confirmation. Server Info & System Status Displays real-time server metrics (CPU load, memory usage, disk space, PHP version, active extensions) as both admin-bar badges and a dashboard widget. Also provides a detailed environment report useful for support tickets and deployment checks. Plugin Version Switcher Roll back or switch between any previously downloaded version of an installed plugin without leaving the admin. Useful for quickly reverting after a bad update. Supports only free plugins from the WordPress repo. Code Snippets Write, save, and execute custom PHP snippets from the admin. Snippets support shortcodes, can be enabled/disabled individually, and are sandboxed before execution. Useful for one-off data migrations, testing custom logic, or generating dynamic output without creating a custom plugin. REST API Manager A security and management tool that gives full visibility and control over every registered REST API endpoint (/wp-json/). Inspect all registered routes, disable individual endpoints, restrict HTTP methods, and hide routes from discovery responses. Useful for hardening your site by removing unnecessary API surface area. WP Panel A centralised control panel for toggling WordPress core features and settings. Enable or disable comments, revisions, auto-updates, XML-RPC, the REST API, emojis, embeds, heartbeat behaviour, frontend asset loading, and more — all from a single, organised admin page. No code changes or custom snippets required. Traffic Analytics Privacy-focused website traffic monitoring built directly into WordPress — no external services or third-party scripts. Tracks unique visitors, pageviews, top pages, referrers, and technology breakdown (devices, browsers, operating systems) with a visual SVG-based dashboard. Choose between server-side (PHP) or client-side (JavaScript) tracking. Includes real-time visitor count automatic period comparison, configurable data retention, and a high-performance file-based write buffer. Important: By default, Traffic Analytics uses server-side (PHP) tracking mode. This method is less accurate because it cannot distinguish bots from real visitors as effectively and may miss visitors served from full-page caches. If you need more precise analytics, switch to client-side (JavaScript) tracking in the module settings — this mode runs a lightweight script in the browser that provides significantly more accurate visitor detection and pageview counting. Security Monitor Real-time security event monitoring and threat detection for your WordPress site. Tracks brute-force login attempts, burst rate limiting (DoS protection), user enumeration attempts, and blocked requests. Displays a summary dashboard with total events, critical alerts, blocked requests, and active incidents over the last 7 days. Includes an Emergency Lockdown button to immediately restrict site access during an active attack. Events are logged with severity level, IP hash (privacy-preserving), attempt counts, and detailed request information. Login & Auth Audit Comprehensive authentication event logging that tracks all login activity on your site. Records successful logins, failed login attempts, session expirations, and password resets with full context — including user, IP hash, user agent, and timestamp. Displays summary statistics (total events, successful logins, failed logins, password resets) for the last 7 days. Supports filtering by event type and severity, search, and CSV export. Recovery Mode Generate single-use recovery links that can disable a specific plugin or trigger a custom action — delivered via Slack, Telegram, or any configured webhook channel. Designed for emergency recovery when the site is inaccessible through normal means. The recovery URLs are sent in Slack and Telegram channels for security. Other Features Dark mode for all admin screens. CSV export on all list views (requests, errors, mails, hooks, etc.). Screen Options on every screen (configure columns, items per page). WP CLI compatible scaffolding for background operations. Multisite aware (note: recovery mode has core multisite limitations). Requirements & Compatibility WordPress 6.0+ (tested up to 6.9) PHP 7.4+ (compatible with PHP 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5) MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+ Not intended as a primary multisite recovery tool (see FAQ) Best Practices & Security Notes Keep log files outside the webroot when possible, or restrict access via server rules (.htaccess / nginx) to prevent public exposure. Use the built-in “Randomise Log Filename” feature when logs must stay in the webroot. All plugin capabilities are restricted to manage_options (administrators) by default. The menu can optionally be restricted to admins only. Sanitize and escape all output; nonces are enforced on all state-changing actions. Secure SMTP credentials using TLS/STARTTLS; credentials are stored in the WordPress options table. Set file permissions tightly (e.g., 600/640) and restrict ownership to the web server user. Backup database and files before using bulk delete or table truncation. Disable unused modules to reduce footprint and potential attack surface. Disable or throttle high-frequency background polling on high-load sites. Usage Notes & Performance The Error Log viewer reads the last N lines (default 100, max configurable via Screen Options) to avoid full-file reads on GB-sized logs. No pagination on error logs by design — pagination would force repeated expensive full-file reads. The PHP Fatal Error Tracker uses its own DB table; apply a retention policy in Settings to avoid unbounded growth. The Hooks Capture module adds minimal overhead per captured hook invocation; disable capturing on production when not actively debugging. The URL Tracker records page visits in a custom table; configure retention or pause tracking on high-traffic sites. Support & Notes Secure log paths and consider randomising filenames in production. Disable unused modules to reduce footprint and attack surface. Recovery Mode has limitations on multisite — test before relying on it. For bugs or feature requests, open an issue on the plugin page. Live preview and full details: https://wordpress.org/plugins/0-day-analytics/ Plugin website and documentation: https://0-day-analytics.com

Delete old, expired transients from the WordPress options table (wp_options), to prevent them from bloating your database and even slowing down your website. Unless you are using an object cache (like memcached), WordPress stores transient records in the options table. Many transients are given an expiration time, so in theory they should disappear after some time. In practise, because old transients are only deleted when requested again after they’ve expired, many transients stay in the database. After a while, there can be thousands or even millions of expired transients needlessly taking up space in your options table, depending on what your plugins are doing. Delete Expired Transients schedules a daily task to delete any expired transients from the options table. It performs this operation with a single SQL query, and then runs a second query to find any orphaned expiration records and deletes them too. There are a few other plugins around that clean up expired transients. This one is written for fast performance, set-and-forget scheduled housekeeping, and maximum compatibility. It uses the PHP time to determine whether transients are expired, not the database time (which can be different). It does only one job, and it does it well with the minimum of resources. Now optimised for WordPress Multisite. Translations Many thanks to the generous efforts of our translators: English (en_CA) — the English (Canadian) translation team English (en_GB) — the English (British) translation team English (en_ZA) — the English (South African) translation team French (fr_FR) — the French translation team Hungarian (hu_HU) — the Hungarian translation team Norwegian: Bokmål (nb_NO) — neonnero Norwegian: Nynorsk (nn_NO) — neonnero Russian (ru_RU) — the Russian translation team Spanish (es_ES) — the Spanish translation team If you’d like to help out by translating this plugin, please sign up for an account and dig in. Contributions Translate into your preferred language Fork me on GitHub Privacy Delete Expired Transients does not collect any personally identifying information, and does not set any cookies. It removes some old information from the database, potentially reducing a website’s exposure to leakage of personally identifying information.