Large increase in database size

Update:
I took the risk and just deactivated that feature. That did remove the extra rows. Then I was able to clean up the db to reclaim the empty space.

So just the second question:

If I activate again and select the Basic rather than the Speedy option, will that just do this again?

Well this disintegrated quickly.

I deactivated the Asset Optimization feature on the site with the biggest tables and also optimised the db. Then I tried activating the Basic method on a small site to see if it would do anything different. It still put the extra rows in the table.

Then I discovered that many posts on the big site had broken. It appeared to be posts where I had disabled the featured image from the archive view. I was also unable to edit and resave those posts as it threw an error.

So luckily I have a back from two weeks ago prior to installing both SmartCrawl and Hummingbird and so I’m in the process of restoring all the way back.

HI @robaxxx

I’m sorry that this gave you so much trouble!

Those “wphb_minify_group” posts are intentional and they should be there but… there shouldn’t be that many of them. Hummingbird uses them (they are “internal” and not related to any specifc posts or pages on site and should not affect them) to store some information that it needs about processing JS/CSS optimization.

However, the fact their number grown so much and so fast means that there’s some additional and unexpected issue involved as Hummingbird is made to and should do enough “maintenance” of those posts to prevent such DB “spamming”.

In most cases it means that due to some conflict Asset Optimization is running over and over again and that’s a matter of either conflict or – though in very rare cases – very specific behavior of page builders.

I think we can rule out the latter for now as it would be quite unexpected. But most cases like this are related to the fact that there is, for example, another plugin attempting to do asset optimization at the same time or a built-in tool in theme that tries to do this. Such tools can cause conflicts.

Another reason for such behavior can be some sort of “duplicated” or “overlapping” caching where one caching tool is caching (and sometimes optimizing) assets while Hummingbird is set to do the same. In general, it’s important to make sure that the same assets are not being optimized and/or cached at the same time by two or more different plugins.

That being said: are you using any other performance optimization tools on site and if yes, what are they? What theme and/or builder are you using? Is there any additional cache active on site/server (other than it possibly was with Hummingbird) and if yes – what is it?

Then I discovered that many posts on the big site had broken. It appeared to be posts where I had disabled the featured image from the archive view. I was also unable to edit and resave those posts as it threw an error.

I’m not sure what do you mean by disabling featured image here. Are you referring to some theme option?

Kind regards,
Adam

Hi Adam

I had to revert to backup as it was just breaking too many things. I was getting oddball issues such as a plugin throwing licensing errors, pages having partially broken layout (looked like broken CSS), and as I had just suffered time consuming dramas with both Forminator and SmartCrawl I was losing faith fast. Note that I also reported two bugs in Beehive, but those were easily replicated and are on the list to be fixed.

So my hit rate with these plugins was not going too well and so I lost faith and reverted. I have kept Beehive installed as the fixes are coming, and Forminator was also fixed in an update so that’s great.

But regarding Hummingbird… I can’t risk installing it again, but I’ll juts give you whatever info I can.

Prior to Hummingbird I used WP Speed of Light, which is a similar plugin, but not nearly as aggressive. It just does basic server and browser caching and basic CSS and JS combining and shrinking. I normally only enabled this for CSS unless it was a simple site. Obviously Speed of Light was deactivated when I installed Humminbgbird.

No other caching plugins were present and I also do not use IIS caching on the server. I went through the whole caching research process quite a while back and originally settled on Speed of Light as it worked and didn’t do anything too crazy. I looked again at Hummingbird because Beehive had received GA4 capability and so the full suite of Beehive, Hummingbird and SmartCrawl started to look like an attractive alternative.

I’ll post the server info which lists all plugins below in case anything looks dubious.

Regarding the issue I mentioned where posts had broken and I noted it was posts where I disabled the image on archive view – I use a feature in Astra Pro that lets one do this per post – See description here: https://wpastra.com/docs/improved-block-editor-experience/#improvement-on-the-featured-images-of-the-posts-page

I’ve no idea why that would be related, but it was happening as described.

If there’s anything else that might help, let me know. I’ll keep an eye on the release logs and can test it again in future.

Regards
Rob

### wp-core ###

version: 6.0.3
site_language: en_AU
user_language: en_AU
timezone: Australia/Adelaide
permalink: /%category%/%postname%/
https_status: true
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user_registration: false
blog_public: 1
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environment_type: production
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network_count: 1
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### wp-dropins (1) ###

db-error.php: true

### wp-active-theme ###

name: (this is a child theme of Astra Pro)
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auto_update: Disabled

### wp-parent-theme ###

name: Astra (astra)
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theme_path: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\xxxxxxxxx/wp-content/themes/astra
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Twenty Twenty-Two: version: 1.2, author: the WordPress team, Auto-updates disabled

### wp-plugins-active (37) ###

Activity Log: version: 2.8.4, author: Activity Log Team, Auto-updates disabled
Admin Menu Editor Pro: version: 2.18, author: Janis Elsts, Auto-updates disabled
AME Branding Add-on: version: 1.3.2, author: Janis Elsts, Auto-updates disabled
Astra Pro: version: 3.9.2, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
Autoremove Attachments: version: 1.3.1, author: Polygon Themes, Auto-updates disabled
Beehive Analytics: version: 3.4.1, author: WPMU DEV, Auto-updates disabled
Better Search Replace: version: 1.4.1, author: Delicious Brains, Auto-updates disabled
Branda: version: 3.4.8, author: WPMU DEV, Auto-updates disabled
Code Snippets Pro: version: 3.2.1, author: Code Snippets Pro, Auto-updates disabled
Disable Author Archives: version: 1.3.1, author: freemp, Auto-updates disabled
Elementor: version: 3.7.8, author: Elementor.com, Auto-updates disabled
Elementor Pro: version: 3.7.6, author: Elementor.com, Auto-updates disabled
Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator: version: 1.3.25, author: Philippe Bernard, Auto-updates disabled
Forminator: version: 1.19.0, author: WPMU DEV, Auto-updates disabled
GuardGiant Brute Force Protection: version: 2.2.5, author: GuardGiant Brute Force Protection, Auto-updates disabled
Imsanity: version: 2.8.2, author: Exactly WWW, Auto-updates disabled
Mail logging – WP Mail Catcher: version: 2.0.5, author: James Ward, Auto-updates disabled
Multisite Enhancements: version: 1.6.1, author: Frank Bültge, Auto-updates disabled
NS Cloner – Site Copier: version: 4.2.1, author: Never Settle, Auto-updates disabled
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions: version: 5.0.110, author: CAGE Web Design | Rolf van Gelder, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Auto-updates disabled
Pre-Publish Checklist: version: 1.1.1, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
Premium Starter Templates: version: 3.1.17, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
Spectra: version: 2.0.13, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
Ultimate Addons for Elementor: version: 1.36.12, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
User Role Editor Pro: version: 4.63.2, author: Vladimir Garagulia, Auto-updates disabled
WordPress Toolbar Editor: version: 1.4.1, author: Janis Elsts, Auto-updates disabled
WP-DBManager: version: 2.80.8, author: Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan, Auto-updates disabled
WP File Download: version: 5.4.2, author: Joomunited (latest version: 5.6.3), Auto-updates disabled
WP Media folder: version: 5.4.8, author: Joomunited, Auto-updates disabled
WP Meta SEO: version: 4.5.0, author: JoomUnited, Auto-updates disabled
WP Meta SEO Addon: version: 1.4.11, author: JoomUnited, Auto-updates disabled
WPS Hide Login: version: 1.9.6, author: WPServeur, NicolasKulka, wpformation, Auto-updates disabled
WP Speed of Light: version: 3.3.0, author: JoomUnited, Auto-updates disabled
WP Speed of Light Addon: version: 3.2.0, author: JoomUnited (latest version: 3.3.1), Auto-updates disabled
WP Table Manager: version: 3.1.1, author: Joomunited (latest version: 3.4.1), Auto-updates disabled
WP Team Showcase and Slider Pro: version: 1.5, author: Essential Plugin, Auto-updates disabled
Yoast Duplicate Post: version: 4.5, author: Enrico Battocchi & Team Yoast, Auto-updates disabled

### wp-plugins-inactive (33) ###

Checkout Plugins – Stripe for WooCommerce: version: 1.4.6, author: Checkout Plugins, Auto-updates disabled
Customizer for WooCommerce: version: 2.7.7, author: SkyVerge, Auto-updates disabled
Customizer Search: version: 1.1.6, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled
Decorator – WooCommerce Email Customizer: version: 1.2.2, author: WebToffee, Auto-updates disabled
Elementor Header & Footer Builder: version: 1.6.13, author: Brainstorm Force, Nikhil Chavan, Auto-updates disabled
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping (Basic): version: 2.3.0, author: ELEXtensions, Auto-updates disabled
Extra product options For WooCommerce | Custom Product Addons and Fields: version: 3.1.7, author: ThemeHigh, Auto-updates disabled
Feed Them Social – for Twitter feed, Youtube, and more: version: 3.0.1, author: SlickRemix, Auto-updates disabled
Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer: version: 1.5.7, author: Kadence WP, Auto-updates disabled
Mailchimp for WooCommerce: version: 2.7.5, author: Mailchimp, Auto-updates disabled
New Zealand Shipping Zones for WooCommerce: version: 1.0.0, author: Daniel Shaw, Auto-updates disabled
Photonic Gallery & Lightbox for Flickr, SmugMug, Google Photos & Others: version: 2.83, author: Sayontan Sinha, Auto-updates disabled
Portfolio and Projects Pro: version: 1.8, author: Essential Plugin, Auto-updates disabled
Post Types Order: version: 1.9.9.1, author: Nsp Code, Auto-updates disabled
Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails: version: 7.1.1, author: Kybernetik Services, Auto-updates disabled
Share Buttons by AddThis: version: 6.2.7, author: The AddThis Team, Auto-updates disabled
SlidersPack Pro – All In One Image/Post Slider: version: 1.0.3, author: WP OnlineSupport, Auto-updates disabled
TranslatePress – Multilingual: version: 2.3.9, author: Cozmoslabs, Razvan Mocanu, Madalin Ungureanu, Cristophor Hurduban, Auto-updates disabled
Variation Swatches for WooCommerce: version: 1.0.5, author: CartFlows, Auto-updates disabled
WooCommerce: version: 7.0.0, author: Automattic, Auto-updates disabled
WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery: version: 1.2.19, author: CartFlows Inc, Auto-updates disabled
WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration: version: 1.5.15, author: WooCommerce, Auto-updates disabled
WooCommerce No Shipping Message: version: 2.1.1, author: dangoodman, Auto-updates disabled
WooCommerce Square: version: 3.2.0, author: WooCommerce, Auto-updates disabled
WooHero: version: 3.4, author: N-Media, Auto-updates disabled
WP Dark Mode: version: 3.0.0, author: WPPOOL, Auto-updates disabled
WP Dark Mode Ultimate: version: 2.1.3, author: WPPOOL, Auto-updates disabled
WP Debugging: version: 2.11.14, author: Andy Fragen, Auto-updates disabled
WP File Download Addon: version: 4.5.12, author: Joomunited, Auto-updates disabled
WPForms Lite: version: 1.7.7.2, author: WPForms, Auto-updates disabled
WP Media folder Addon: version: 3.6.3, author: Joomunited, Auto-updates disabled
WP Media folder Gallery Addon: version: 2.4.1, author: Joomunited, Auto-updates disabled
WP Portfolio: version: 1.11.3, author: Brainstorm Force, Auto-updates disabled

### code-snippets (5) ###

snippet-1: name: Example HTML shortcode, scope: global, modified: 2022-01-23 05:14:36, tags: [shortcode]
snippet-2: name: Example CSS snippet, scope: front-end, modified: 2022-01-23 05:14:36, tags: [css]
snippet-3: name: Example JavaScript snippet, scope: front-end, modified: 2022-01-23 05:14:36, tags: [javascript]
snippet-4: name: Order snippets by name, scope: admin, modified: 2022-01-23 05:14:36, tags: [code-snippets-plugin]
snippet-5: name: Order snippets by date, scope: admin, modified: 2022-01-23 05:14:36, tags: [code-snippets-plugin]

### wp-media ###

image_editor: WP_Image_Editor_Imagick
imagick_module_version: 1799
imagemagick_version: ImageMagick 7.0.7-11 Q16 x86 2017-11-23 https://www.imagemagick.org
imagick_version: 3.4.4
file_uploads: File uploads is turned off
post_max_size: 128M
upload_max_filesize: 128M
max_effective_size: 128 MB
max_file_uploads: 60
imagick_limits:
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_AREA: 2 GB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_DISK: 1.844674407371E+19
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_FILE: 1536
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_MAP: 2 GB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_MEMORY: 1,003 MB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_THREAD: 8
imagemagick_file_formats: 3FR, 3G2, 3GP, AAI, AI, ART, ARW, AVI, AVS, BGR, BGRA, BGRO, BIE, BMP, BMP2, BMP3, BRF, CAL, CALS, CANVAS, CAPTION, CIN, CIP, CLIP, CLIPBOARD, CMYK, CMYKA, CR2, CRW, CUR, CUT, DCM, DCR, DCX, DDS, DFONT, DJVU, DNG, DOT, DPS, DPX, DXT1, DXT5, EMF, EPDF, EPI, EPS, EPS2, EPS3, EPSF, EPSI, EPT, EPT2, EPT3, ERF, EXR, FAX, FILE, FITS, FLIF, FPX, FRACTAL, FTP, FTS, G3, G4, GIF, GIF87, GRADIENT, GRAY, GROUP4, GV, HALD, HDR, HISTOGRAM, HRZ, HTM, HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, ICB, ICO, ICON, IIQ, INFO, INLINE, IPL, ISOBRL, ISOBRL6, J2C, J2K, JBG, JBIG, JNG, JNX, JP2, JPC, JPE, JPEG, JPG, JPM, JPS, JPT, JSON, K25, KDC, LABEL, M2V, M4V, MAC, MAP, MASK, MAT, MATTE, MEF, MIFF, MKV, MNG, MONO, MOV, MP4, MPC, MPEG, MPG, MRW, MSL, MSVG, MTV, MVG, NEF, NRW, NULL, ORF, OTB, OTF, PAL, PALM, PAM, PANGO, PATTERN, PBM, PCD, PCDS, PCL, PCT, PCX, PDB, PDF, PDFA, PEF, PES, PFA, PFB, PFM, PGM, PICON, PICT, PIX, PJPEG, PLASMA, PNG, PNG00, PNG24, PNG32, PNG48, PNG64, PNG8, PNM, PPM, PS, PS2, PS3, PSB, PSD, PTIF, PWP, RADIAL-GRADIENT, RAF, RAS, RAW, RGB, RGBA, RGBO, RGF, RLA, RLE, RMF, RW2, SCR, SCREENSHOT, SCT, SFW, SGI, SHTML, SIX, SIXEL, SPARSE-COLOR, SR2, SRF, STEGANO, SUN, SVG, SVGZ, TEXT, TGA, THUMBNAIL, TIFF, TIFF64, TILE, TIM, TTC, TTF, TXT, UBRL, UBRL6, UIL, UYVY, VDA, VICAR, VID, VIFF, VIPS, VST, WBMP, WEBP, WMF, WMV, WPG, X3F, XBM, XC, XCF, XPM, XPS, XV, YCbCr, YCbCrA, YUV
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gd_formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, XPM
ghostscript_version: not available

### wp-server ###

server_architecture: Windows NT 10.0 i586
httpd_software: Microsoft-IIS/10.0
php_version: 7.4.13
php_sapi: cgi-fcgi
max_input_variables: 1000
time_limit: 300
memory_limit: 512M
max_input_time: 60
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php_post_max_size: 128M
curl_version: 7.70.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1h
suhosin: false
imagick_availability: true
pretty_permalinks: true

### wp-database ###

extension: mysqli
server_version: 5.7.34
client_version: mysqlnd 7.4.13
max_allowed_packet: 4194304
max_connections: 151

### wp-constants ###

WP_HOME: undefined
WP_SITEURL: undefined
WP_CONTENT_DIR: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\xxxxxxxxx/wp-content
WP_PLUGIN_DIR: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\xxxxxxxxx/wp-content/plugins
WP_MEMORY_LIMIT: 64M
WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT: 512M
WP_DEBUG: false
WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY: true
WP_DEBUG_LOG: false
SCRIPT_DEBUG: false
WP_CACHE: false
CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS: undefined
COMPRESS_SCRIPTS: undefined
COMPRESS_CSS: undefined
WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE: Undefined
DB_CHARSET: utf8mb4
DB_COLLATE: undefined

### wp-filesystem ###

wordpress: writable
wp-content: writable
uploads: writable
plugins: writable
themes: writable

Hi @robaxxx,

I hope you are doing well today!

Thank you for sharing the details. Please also check Hummingbird->Advanced Tools->Plugin Health section if you have any items marked in red for deletion, especially on Orphaned Asset Optimization Metadata section.

https://wpmudev.com/docs/wpmu-dev-plugins/hummingbird/#orphaned-asset-optimization-metadata

Please remove all marked red there and clear your asset optimization cache, then click recheck files again on Hummingbird->Asset Optimization section.

Kind regards,
Zafer

Hi @robaxxx,

Since we haven’t heard from you for a while. I’ll mark this thread as resolved for now. Please feel free to re-open the thread if you need further assistance.

Best Regards
Nithin