Does anyone know of a plugin for CP that allows one to check the file sizes and “cleanup” the database(s)? I’m up to 11GB for my site, which seems way too large, and I need to reduce the footprint.
For that sort of size on your site, your problem is going to be with videos, audio files, or images. They should all be in their own folders so should be easy enough to check without a plugin. I’d be particularly checking for duplicates.
Tim,
Where are the POSTS stored? I assume it’s in WP-CONTENT, but I’m not sure?
No. Posts are stored in the database, not in files. Unless something is very wrong with your site, there’s no way that posts are causing this. You need to look in wp-content/uploads for the uploaded files like videos and images.
Tim - I’m really getting confused now… when I check the folders, I’m seeing MULTIPLE versions of the same file, even though I know I only uploaded ONE version. So now I don’t know which to delete? Any tips?
This is exactly what I expected!
The original file is the one without any numbers in its name. But you shouldn’t start by deleting the others. What you need to do is find out what’s making all the duplicates. It could be your theme or a plugin. Some duplicates are probably a good idea (so that an unnecessarily large file isn’t served), but having all those sizes is ridiculous.
Do you remember seeing a setting somewhere that enabled you to choose the sizes of your images?
Tim - ah, nope… I looked at the THEME, which is NEWSPAPER 4.0; I don’t see anything in there that allows me to control images sizes. Wotta’ bummer!
Then it’s either a plugin you have or your theme does it automatically (which would be fine for a couple of sizes but not for all these).
Dick: you might want to check your CP admin page → Settings → Media → Media size, then see which of the multiple images (duplicates, e.g., of amberlightresized) in your uploads are the same size as the sizes you have listed in those CP settings; the rest are, as Tim points out, probably being generated by a plugin [edit: or your theme]. This almost happened to me with a caching plugin that also included an image-optimizer function that generated (or which seemed would generate; I never used it) more duplicates in various sizes than I needed.
This may not be your problem, but it may be worth checking.
Thanks! What I really need is someone who is familiar with tagdiv’s NEWSPAPER/NEWSMAG theme, and knows where the code is for generating multiple images… all the articles say it’s in functions.php, but I don’t see it in there
The REPLY from NEWSPAPER theme - & it WORKED… I still have multiple images, but it cut it back from 26GB to 21GB… excellent service:
Each thumb that you have enabled will create a copy for that image, so you can disable the thumbs that are not used
So, our theme makes thumbs which are enabled in Theme Panel → Block Settings => 2021-02-12_14-40-59 → Newspaper Theme Documentation: How to Optimize the theme thumbs.
Also, WordPress creates thumbs => 2021-02-12_15-20-10
Our suggestion is to take a look at what blocks you use and make sure that the thumbs are active only for that=> Newspaper Theme Documentation: How to Optimize the theme thumbs
After activating the thumbnail sizes you need to regenerate your thumbnails using a plugin. Check this: Newspaper Theme Documentation: How to Use Your Existing Content
I’ve worked on websites like this—20 GB of useless images when each uploaded image generated 20 sizes. The hard part is that you can’t just delete them. You don’t know where images are used.
The only plugin that helps clean this up is Media Cleaner. There’s a free and pro version. I’ve used the pro version, and it’s very good. However, it requires WordPress 5.5, so it can’t be used with CP v1.6. But it should work with CP v2.0 when it comes out or if you decide to test v2.0.
With 20GB and shared hosting, scanning everything may take a while. If I remember correctly, it took about 48 hours to scan the website at that size.
My solution was a superb plugin called *TinyPNG"; it took about 4 hours for it to reduce the file sizes I chose in the NEWSPAPER theme (only 6, instead of 10)… still bloated, but it significantly reduced the backup footprint.
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Yes, compressing images is one way to reduce the overall size. Media Cleaner plugin I mentioned attempts to help find and delete unused image sizes.
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