Transient Cleaner vs Generate Cache

Clean expired transients from your options table. The original and best! Transient housekeeping was added to the core of WordPress after version 5.8. However, I have decided to open up this plugin to all versions to allow for manual transient cleaning. Longer term I am working on a new version of the plugin, designed specifically for all WordPress releases. Tested up to PHP 8.2 Fully complies with WordPress coding standards Compliant with the stronger WordPress VIP coding standards, as well as compatibility with their platform Community plugin – visit the Github page to get involved with the latest code development, request enhancements and report issues “Transients are a simple and standardized way of storing cached data in the WordPress database temporarily by giving it a custom name and a timeframe after which it will expire and be deleted.” Unfortunately, expired transients only get deleted when you attempt to access them. If you don’t access the transient then, even though it’s expired, WordPress will not remove it. This is a known “issue” but due to reasons, which are explained in the FAQ, this has not been adequately resolved. Why is this a problem? Transients are often used by plugins to “cache” data (my own plugins included). Because of this it means that expired data can be left and build up, resulting in a bloated database table. Meantime, this plugin is the hero that you’ve been waiting for. Simply activate the plugin, sit back and enjoy a much cleaner, smaller options table. It also adds the additional recommendation that after a database upgrade all transients will be cleared down. The Settings Screen Within Administration -> Tools -> Transients an options screen exists allowing you to tweak when you’d like cleaning to happen, including the ability to perform an ad-hoc run, and when you’d like the to be automatically scheduled. You can even request an optimization of the options table to give your system a real “pep”! Running in Lite mode A “lite” mode is available. By activating this the options screen will no longer appear and default settings will be used. The advantage? Improved performance to Admin and, especially if you’re running multi-site, no chance of anybody “tinkering” with the settings. To activate, use the following… define( 'TC_LITE', true ); This should be added to your wp-config.php file. Using hooks If you’re the type of odd person who likes to code for WordPress (really?) then I’ve added a couple of hooks so you can call our rather neat cleaning functions… housekeep_transients – this will clear down any expired transients clear_all_transients – this will remove any and all transients, expired or otherwise Acknowledgements I’d like to thank WordPress Developer Andrew Nacin for his early discussion on this. Also, I’d like to acknowledge the useful article at Everybody Staze for ensuring the proposed solution made sense, and W-Shadow.com for the cleaning code. Iconography is courtesy of the very talented Janki Rathod.

When your cache is emptied (say, upon a new post or comment publication, or if you delete it manually after website changes), the plugin loops through selected items (posts, categories, tags or pages) and makes sure you have them all freshly cached to be rapidly served to visitors. You can also use this plugin when performing website construction, design or maintenance, so that only cached pages are served to visitors. How this works: Let’s say you’ve got a caching plugin installed on your blog (Hyper Cache, WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache or what have you). When new content is added (posts, pages, comments, etc.) the cache is automatically deleted. But your entire blog will only be cached when somebody re-visits every single page. Generate Cache plugin keeps track of your cache directory and if its size drops below the value you specify, new cache for your entire blog will be automatically regenerated. You can choose which blog items should be taken into account: posts, categories, tags, pages and the home page. Benefits: Perform website maintenance/construction while serving cached pages to visitors. Have your cache always prebuild for better search rankings, since page loading time is a significant SEO factor. Quickly serve cached pages to visitors. Never worry about prebuilding your cache manually. Features overview: Keeps track of your cache folder size so that it never drops below a certain limit. Tries to guess your cache folder location, or you can specify it manually. Choose for which blog items (posts, categories, tags, pages) cache should be regenerated. Set cache generation interval. Schedule automatic cache generation to be run at a specific time even if cache folder size is not below limit (in case your caching plugin doesn’t emply cache upon content changes). Manually start/abort cache generation from the admin page. Note: This is not a caching plugin! It is to be used only together with such. My other plugins: Intuitive Navigation (https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/intuitive-navigation/) Drop in Dropbox (https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/drop-in-dropbox/) Links: Steaming Kettle Website Design & Video Production Studio